For the prominent Chilean actress Antonia Zegers (Santiago, 50 years old) there is an opinion that makes ambivalence about motherhood impossible: The woman must happily experience a kind of “divine love revelation” when the child is born. There is no room to inhabit the complexity and harshness that the role entails. For this reason, when she read the script for the film El Castigo, which opens in Spain this Friday, she accepted the role of Ana, a mother faced with the adversity of bonding with her seven-year-old son. “I feel what is happening to her. Not that it’s happening to me, but I can feel it. I can do it. Not just as an actress, but personally,” he told director Matías Bize (The Memory of the Water, In Bed).
Zegers, a mother of two, recognizes in the living room of her home in the municipality of Ñuñoa, a traditional neighborhood in the Chilean capital, that she has experienced the complexities of motherhood in a “rather intimate” way. “It was a nice process for me, but one of growth. To find out who I am in it. I also had many fantasies that changed me the moment I experienced motherhood. And my fantasies were idealized, as is the case with couples,” reflects the actress, nominated for Best Female Performance at the Platino Awards for Ibero-American Cinema.
The tape breaks the peach on the loneliness mothers experience as perfection in the face of every other emotion. “I found this to be a very nice opportunity to build a bridge for something that has no name,” says Zegers. “Failing to educate yourself about living in darker areas of yourself in terms of a bond that needs to be light and loving. [Ese sentimiento] It’s not bad or definitive,” he adds of a debate that echoed in conversations following the film’s presentation in various countries. Both female and male audiences agree that there is a need to discuss how to start a family today, how to organize and how to raise children.
Interview with Antonia Zegers.sofia yanjari
The plot begins with Ana and her husband, played by Néstor Cantillana, desperately looking for their son who is lost in the green Quillín forest, 900 kilometers south of Santiago de Chile. The setting is another character, a “scary one” who cleverly collaborates with the script of the Spanish Coral Cruz. Zegers highlights how the parable Plant the Forest You’ll Get Lost in fuels the suspense the characters experience in the thriller.
Antonia Zegers’ platinum nomination is one of 15 that Chile has. The actress attributes this to the good quality of the content she creates, a real feat for how precarious the industry is. “When they know in other places there is just one competitive fund and the amounts that are being awarded, that sounds crazy in terms of the flight they have [las películas afuera] and the image of the country that creates it,” affirms the performer, who started cinema a quarter of a century ago.
He regrets “not much” how much the industry has changed since its beginnings: “Culture policy was not up to the task of bringing Chilean cinema back to our country.” the lack of resources has led to co-productions with foreign industries, which has enriched the final product.
Antonia Zegers at her home in Santiago.sofia yanjari
In addition to film, Zegers has worked in television and theater, even venturing into audio series with Caso 63, the Spotify fiction podcast that has become the most listened to in Latin America.
She apologizes for the photo session required for the interview by putting on her makeup at the Teatro de la Memoria, where she presents a monologue directed by Alfredo Castro, a presenter of contemporary Chilean theater. In playwright Dennis Kelly’s “Girls & Boys,” Zegers plays a woman who tries to use humor to banish great pain—at least for the first hour. And the topic of motherhood comes up again, albeit from a different perspective. “We’ve entered the workforce a little more fairly, a little more competitively, but we remain with the same burden in terms of motherhood and it’s an open topic,” says Zegers, explaining why the topic is being discussed so intensely. Interest.
“It’s not that we won’t take care of our kids, but let’s talk about it. Also at work. I have to work to be a competitive woman and pretend my children don’t exist for those 11 hours or we understand that to the extent that they make it easier for me, generations to come will not be horrified, Being a mother.” She affirms two aspects that take up a lot of time: motherhood and work. “It’s very demanding and women have been left very alone with that requirement,” he adds.