It's a daily series, but it opens with an action scene typical of prime-time fiction. In the opening moments of Dreams of Freedom, a woman in late 1950s Spain flees through the forest with her stepdaughter. They are pursued by her husband, who, when he catches up with them, shoots in cold blood. The script immediately jumps back in time to explain how this couple, encountering the patterns of a toxic relationship, reached this point, but it won't take many chapters to return to that intense first moment. Set to inherit the long-running Amar es para siempre in the afternoons of Antena 3, the series carries its ambitious visual and narrative standards as its flagship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3OW3gtleeo
This new fiction, soon to be published, reflects a very specific Spain and two very different realities: that of a wealthy family, the De la Reina family, owners of an elegant chain of perfumeries, and the workers who live right next to the factory who run it drives companies. The ingredients are the same as always, but much more complex, defends his creative team. In addition to the plots full of ambition, forbidden love, betrayal and injustice, there are aesthetics – costumes, set design, hairdresser… – typical of the historical stories of the on-demand series, which comprises eight episodes per season. With these deliveries, the new Antena 3 series would not even have two weeks of airtime. But as Eulàlia Carrillo, the series' script coordinator, noted in mid-January, “its potential viewer is largely the same as that of the great weekly fictions and has refined its appearance.”
For Montse García, Director of Fiction at Atresmedia TV, the goal was “to find a compelling story with impeccable craftsmanship.” Only a great series could take the baton from Amar es para siempre,” he says. The paradox arises that Amar is very often the most successful content in the afternoon on Antena 3 (and therefore in the rest of the general television offering), just a few weeks after the broadcast has finally ended. He has been on screen for 18 years, seven of them in La 1 as Amar in troubled times. The way of producing daily content has changed a lot since 2005 and this new project allows us to make this qualitative leap. There's a good chance that Antena 3 will follow the strategy of previous releases and air the first episode of Sueños de Libertad in prime time, right after El Hormiguero. The television coverage at this time of night is twice as high as the usual time slot for the series produced by Diagonal TV.
Its protagonist, Natalia Sánchez, flourished in Los Serrano and years ago made a name for herself precisely with a character in Amar es para siempre. The actress finds the recording of this new series much more complicated due to the hours she spends in the studio and the large number of outdoor sequences, almost all of them in Toledo and El Escorial. The angry husband is played by Alain Hernández, who in his case recently experienced another afternoon classic, “The Secret of Puente Viejo.” Both are clear that a big initial bet was needed to captivate a viewer accustomed to watching its predecessor for nearly two decades.
The two main actors emphasize that the first Flash will not be sporadic. The plots are not expanded unnecessarily because they are aware of the large number of hours on the network that they must take up. “In the chapters we are recording now [más allá de la entrega 50]“A lot of things continue to happen, and a lot of them,” she says. “There's a level of intensity that's not typical of everyday fiction, where you can stop watching it for a month and when you start it again it picks up pretty much where you left it.” , he concludes.
Joan Noguera (right) during filming of the new daily series on Antena 3.Manuel Fiestas Moreno
Two microuniverses for Spain in the fifties
In the Boadilla del Monte studios, 24 kilometers from Madrid, where the recordings take place, two microuniverses have been created in just a few square meters. Around the corner of an elegant perfumery is the decoration that recreates a humble tavern for employees. Next is the elegant De la Reina mansion with wide hallways and luxurious furnishings. Alongside this, the workers' humble rooms are filled with items that would remind many viewers of their grandparents' homes. They are recreated with such precision that it is very likely that many of their details – old magazines, old playing cards, sewing kits and colorful board games – go unnoticed and are only appreciated by the actors recreating these characters from the past.
At the entrance to the studios are rows of donkeys stacked with the clothing of the many characters in Dreams of Freedom hanging. Because of its cut and color palette, it is easy to see where the rich area is separated from the humble area. But as Alberto Cavia, who along with Montse Sancho is one of the people responsible for the costumes, warns, the exact historical recreation of this production represents a small historical exception. He prefers to give the workers' clothes a little more color and give them a little of to deviate from the prevailing gray and ocher Francoist outfits. Everyone in charge agrees that a daily series shouldn't depress viewers. The component of hope necessary for a long-term approach is personalized through the figure of Begoña. For Sánchez, the actress who plays her, she is “a dreamy woman with a desire to live and be happy. The romantic beginnings with Jesús go wrong and she begins a struggle to move forward.” This journey turns the character “from head to toe into a heroine, with all her weaknesses and strengths,” defends the screenwriter who conceived her. Before Sueños de Libertad, Eulàlia Carrillo supervised and signed hundreds of episodes of La Riera and dozens of Vendetplá, two renowned soap operas of the Catalan regional channel TV3.
Despite being a daily series, “Dreams of Freedom” often features outdoor sequences. Jose Alberto Puertas
“The storylines reflect Spain of those years very well on a social level, since we didn't get involved in politics,” says Hernández. “The machismo of that time was obvious and normalized, and therefore Jesus will appear even more evil in the eyes of the audience than the rest of the characters,” he warns. His character is therefore a man of his time, also a victim of the sexist codes that those around him force him to adhere to, but he also points out that he “displays more than reprehensible behavior that would not be accepted in anyone.” Epoch.”
Can “Dreams of Freedom” hold up to this high visual bar for long? The team has to record one chapter per day like any other production of these features. Its director Joan Noguera relies on the extensive experience of the series team, which he already led on “Amar in Troubled Times”. Although the project is designed to remain on the grid for many seasons, in these first chapters its creators have not contented themselves with developing a generic story that turns its characters into interchangeable archetypes. “We prefer to give identity to the protagonists and their conflicts, and in the future, when the time comes, we will see how we can open up the spectrum and play with other storylines that are already there,” says the director.
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