Face to Face

Famous TV host Lina appears at the house of her social media hater to ask him to say out loud and to her face all the threats he has posted on Twitter. They soon discover they are not so different from each other.

When PEDRO opens the door of his house to greet a potential flatmate, he’s surprised to find LINA, a well-known TV host. She isn't interested in the room; she only wants Pedro to say out loud what he wrote on social media: "I'm glad about what happened to you. I hope you kill yourself too. I can help you." Lina leaves Pedro's house frustrated that she couldn't achieve what she came for – to burn away the guilt she has carried since her daughter attempted suicide. The next morning, Pedro finds Lina in a state of shock on a nearby street. Lina ends up occupying the room, but only because she needs somewhere to hide to avoid facing the moment her daughter will be disconnected from life support and to escape from the journalists hounding her like wolves after their prey. For days, Lina and Pedro are two shadows sharing the same space without crossing paths, but little by little, all the demons they harbour inside begin to emerge and they soon discover they are more alike than they thought.

Keywords: social media, motherhood, fatherhood

Director's note:
Face to Face will be my second feature-length film after my directorial debut Josefina (selected at New Directors - San Sebastian Film Festival 2021), which Belen also wrote. With Face to Face, our intention is to go deeper into the path we started in our previous films and add more layers to our vision of the complexity of human beings. In Face to Face, we would love to explore again solitude, empathy and the inner nature of human beings, but this time, Belen and I would love to take a step further and intertwine in our story a reflection on the limits of the humans’ public and private dimensions. Face to Face is a cathartic film where two lonely souls come together to heal their wounds and understand they are not so different. Underneath the many human emotional layers, such as the grief for the loss of a loved one, solitude, guilt or empathy, the real antagonist of the story will emerge: the society around them, in the form of an anonymous mass, hidden behind mass media.

Producer's note:
Face to Face is a co-production between Spain and Belgium. Co-produced by Pecado Films, LaCima Producciones, Langosta Films, Odessa Films, Biograf Capital AIE and Bulletproof Cupid. Face to Face is Javier Marco’s second feature-length film after the directorial debut JOSEFINA (San Sebastian, 2021), and is written by himself and Belén Sánchez-Arévalo. This project is based on the namesake short film (2020) which won the Spanish Film Academy Award for Best Short Film 2021 and more than 90 international awards.

Face to Face is co-financed by the European Union-Creative Europe Media, Spanish Film Institute, Madrid Community and Institut Valenciano de Cultura, is participated by ÀPunt TV and sponsored by the Government of Castilla-La Mancha. This project has been selected at international laboratories such as the Spanish Film Academy Spanish Residency and TorinoFilmLab Next.