Paul Risker chats with Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, writer-director of Thursday Till Sunday...
![]()
Recently I was privileged to have an opportunity to speak with Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, and gain an insight into the mind of the writer-director, who made her feature debut with Thursday Till Sunday. She spoke to us about how she finds inspiration close to home, her love of Antonioni, combining film, fiction with her personal memories to create above all a film for everyone.
Paul Risker: What was the inspiration and genesis for Thursday Till Sunday?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: All of my short films as well as Thursday Till Sunday have come from personal things that surround me. I'm not going very far to find stories. I think it is an observation of family situations and people that I know. I only like to go so far; so in a way it is like a personal starting point, but then the fiction is growing up in the middle. Specifically in this film the inspiration was a picture I found; the picture seen in the film of the two kids on the roof of the car.
So I found this picture of my cousin Manuel and I, and we were travelling on the roof of the car on a trip. It was very funny, because when I saw the picture three or four years ago, I remembered how great this trip was, and this moment. I had the feeling that this was one of the most amazing moments of my childhood, but at the same time all these years later I realised how dangerous and extreme the idea to put us on the roof was.
This picture was the starting point because I had this idea to make a film of two different trips: of these kids against the wind on the roof, and this couple inside with the confinement and the crisis. Then there was a collection of images from my childhood, this feeling of travelling, more like the image and the physical feeling rather than in the geographical sense. This feeling of travelling in the back seat of the car, and all the games, all the things that happen in the confinement.
Paul Risker: There is this sense of inertia in Thursday Till Sunday. It's a very slow moving film, yet all the way through there is this tension, and at first it doesn't necessarily feel as though the danger is from within, but rather that it could be from the landscape, from other people travelling along the road. But gradually you realise the whole film is about the collapse of a family, and threat is an internal one.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: The idea was to have this balance between the danger and the excitement, and I am interested in how the familiar can become threatening at the same time. It is a reflection of family, of the roles of the family and how all of these characters are in a way alone. There is a tension from something that is not happening, and at the end there is this collapse of the family.
Paul Risker: The film is building towards this moment, the realisation for the children that everything is set to change once the trip is over.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: What was interesting for me was to try in both the script and through the mise en scene to be close to the children's discomfort. There is that sense of danger when the kids feel scared. For example, when Lucia is alone in the desert for ten minutes, to her it is like an eternal abandonment. It is a game of how little things for kids so, at times means more danger; more transcendental trauma.
Paul Risker: You have remarked of your fascination of the connection between film and memory. One of the themes in the film is that you are presenting the children with events that will be the seeds for future memories, both happy and sad.
![]()
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: The script is structured like a memory of someone looking back at their childhood. It is so amazing and so sad at the same time, and I was trying to capture how kids feel all of this emotion simultaneously; how complex it is to feel when you are little and how deep you feel.
What interested me about the structure was the idea of being between things. It is not about big events; it is more about what is in the middle, and what is in the middle is related by the kids. How kids remember trips, and how kids also arrive at the situations is connected with a distance; in a fragmented way, arriving later to the moments, hearing just part of a discussion. So I think the viewer needs to share in the discomfort of the kids in the back seat looking at the backs of the parents.
Paul Risker: There are those scenes featuring dialogue, but a portion of the film functions as a silent film, in which we are required to observe the physical presence of the characters; their connections through how they interact with one another.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: I like it when mise-en-scene by itself is conflicted, and so I was trying to create that with the image, always very close to the camera.
The film was shot with a physical memory to mind; how I was looking and how I was listening when I was little. This is my most autobiographical film, not the story itself but the physical feeling of travelling in the back seat of the car. I was trying with the camera to be close to this feeling of being a kid. I like it when little details are revealing, but not through words.
It is also about how kids do not understand by words. Maybe they don't understand what their parents are talking about, but they feel it on another level.
Paul Risker: To talk about your placement of the audience. It doesn't feel as though you are inviting us in, or rather that you are attempting to create a traditional immersive experience that will draw us into the film. It feels as though you are keeping us back, to a position of being almost voyeurs on this private story, the private lives of these characters.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It's what I was saying at the beginning, how this daily situation, how these very tedious and familiar things can become threatening. My idea was to be very close with this family inside the car. The camera is always inside, the length is always inside, and then when they arrive in the desert we leave them, and we have the feeling of how insignificant or how small they are in the big scenario.
It is a reflection of this, about the distance, and how these little things are seen through the bigger scenario. Lucia also feels like this when she looks through the window and she says, "I don't like it when it looks like this." She means the Earth and how small they are in this crisis. This decision has to do with these feelings of childhood, because when you are little you have more open fears, but you learn how to forget the fear of how fragile and small we are.
![]()
Paul Risker: So, we are in the car with these characters, we pull back and we then realise that this is just one small story amongst many small stories. The idea of human existence as insignificant?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It is a very simple idea. The relationship between kids and society when you are little is similar; how the places still exist when you are not looking at them, how small we are, how round the Earth is, and how there is something of these feelings in the film. These childhood feelings are reflected in the film and how kids project their problems in another way, in dreams. When Lucia wanted to be alone at night, I think there was an existential anxiety that I was trying to capture. For me it was very important to make it in film, in Super 16, because the genesis of the film has to do with capturing something; capturing the past.
For me the materiality of capturing this in cinema was one of the important things. It is like an old picture that is losing its colours, of this childhood trip. Everything was scripted, it wasn't improvised. The idea was to try to capture something alive, to make a document of childhood through the fiction. Real feelings, because these are not big things happening. It was more to try to capture a time that is passing, and for me the film is like a prism, a memory but in present tense. It is why it is so timeless, because it has something the 80s and 90s of my childhood, but it's more like a generic childhood in that I was trying to make it timeless.
Paul Risker: You are only willing to provide us with a certain amount of information, to exist with an ambiguity, not answering all the questions, not explaining everything, but forcing the audience to piece the puzzle together for themselves. What are your thoughts on mainstream narrative filmmaking compared to the kind of film your directorial debut represents?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: For me cinema has more to do with empty spaces rather than completing the scene. Thursday Till Sunday is a film that is an invitation to open your mind. For me the mise-en-scene and my decisions can provoke a feeling and make a reflection from the cinema; not from the story. This films invites you to be in the backseat with the kids, and the viewer is trying to complete as the kids are doing in little parts. What is important as I have said is not what happens; it is more the feeling. It is a film that you have the time to complete with your own memories. I'm not interested in films where everything is given. For me, I like the exercise of thought in film.
Paul Risker: You are a proponent of the cinema of feeling rather than intense and traditional narrative. You are more interested in expressing characters' feelings, and creating that sense of feeling.
![]()
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It's an exploration, and for me it was an exercise. I'm happy, because in a way I had very formal and specific ideas. To be far away from the parents in the backseat of the car, the point of view, very graphic things, because when I was writing the script I was thinking of these images, but I had the feeling that people really connect with the feeling of being a child and this discomfort.
As a first film it was an exploration, and also an opportunity to work with landscapes in a very dramatic way. What would make me happy now is if people feel a connection with the film. It's not only a film for those who know about cinema. It is a film for someone who doesn't study cinema, who is not a critic. Every viewer can connect with childhood, and it is a very simple film. It is four people inside a car. It could happen anywhere; it could happen everywhere, but at the same time it is very Chilean.
I am not motivated to make a political film, because my generation is the least political in Chile. I don't have a political story, so for me it is not natural, and I don't like to go so far away from what I have observed. But for me it is a film that talks about Chilean people, or how we don't know how to communicate with each other, or a specific personality. It is also political and observes how family works here in very specific little elements. The film's couple is kind of middle class, but they are also a little cultured and they have a maid. It is a very specific Chilean family that wasn't perhaps portrayed before, usually portrayed through the higher class or the lower class. This is also Chile, and when people ask about my lack of interest in political cinema, for me cinema is political anyway.
This is my point of view of how we are living, and it is my point of view of life, and I am making the point with a film, and this is a political act. Also my country is reflected in this car.
Paul Risker: Thursday Till Sunday shows that you don't need to be deliberate in everything you say, that the audience can pick up on themes and metaphors, such as the way in which you use the landscape. You don't need to go out to make a political film that means something, because that naturally seems to exist in films and comes through in an idea.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It is not about giving answers or giving meanings. It is more to give an experience of understanding yourself. It is more that the meaning is there and the meaning is for everybody. The meaning is so open, and what I like about the point of view of the kids in the film is that it is not about who is the bad guy, it is about the fragility of this couple through the eyes of the kids.
It is not important why they are splitting up or who is the one who is leaving the other one. I like this distance and this view without the prejudice that kids have.
Paul Risker: Was it an intention to create a film that people could read differently?
![]()
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It was a nice process. I put myself in the position to write the story in details, the story about the couple, even if it is in the shadows. I needed it to be clear to write the script and pick out some details, and it seemed to offer information little by little. But for me it was the idea to make it up. Many people ask me who is having sex with the woman in the tent, and for me it is the father, but for some people I think it has to with the point of view of Lucia; she doesn't know and it's not important either.
What is important is the effect of this crisis on the kids. So there is this ambiguity, but for me it was him who was leaving here, and he has already rented an apartment.
Nobody really changes, and for me with the character of the mother there is a little hope of change. She realises after camping that she can be loved and she doesn't want to be with someone who doesn't love her. I think she is more fragile at the beginning of the film, and then she realises that maybe someone can love her when this other guy appears. I don't think she likes this other guy, but it is like hope. In the beginning he is very sure about leaving her and his family, but he is also very fragile.
Paul Risker: Is there a sense of uncertainty at the end of the film for you?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: By the end you don't know what will happen. Probably it is the last family trip, but I didn't want to make a film of a last family trip. It is just a weekend, and when you are dealing with a couple, there is just not that one last trip, or maybe there are, but it is more like a long process. So I'd like it to be one of the last family trips, but my feeling is that even if they split up after the film, they are more connected at the end.
For Lucia this is a trip of loss of innocence. She realises how human her parents are and how complex the world is, but at the same time she connects with her father. At the beginning he's like a ghost, and at the end she has a connection with him, and they will be closer now, even if her parents are not together. It is also a reflection of how important the family is itself. I think it is more important to have real connections than to be together as a concept.
Paul Risker: Would you agree that sad memories are just as important as happy memories?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It comes together, and for me it is why the picture of the kids on the roof is interests me; this polarity. It was the best memory and the most dangerous thing at the same time, and the film has this ability; the trip the best and the worst at the same time. It was the first time Lucia drove the car, and at the same time it was so sad.
I think life is like this, and when you are a kid you have both at the same time. These memories are going to be a part of Lucia's future and this trip is important because the happy and the sad memories are part of her. It is a story of growing up.
![]()
Paul Risker: Were there any films that were a particular source of inspiration?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: I grew up without television and electricity. I consider myself without much direct influence from films, television, at least in my childhood. Then I started seeing a lot of films. This film's inspiration comes more from pictures of my childhood. I was influenced by Antonioni, the films of Kirostami, Haneke, Roy Anderson and Cassavettes. I am very interested in the filmmakers who have something conflicted in the mise-en-scene by itself.
Thursday Till Sunday is cinematic, it couldn't be a book. It is very physical in the way it is shot. Also the aesthetic of my family, because my mother is an actress, and there is a lot of me coming from there, and my grandmother and aunt are painters, I think there are colours and shapes that come from my family.
Paul Risker: So it feels natural for you to be a filmmaker?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It is funny, because when I was planning to study cinema, I wanted to do something different from the rest of my family. I didn't want to be an actress because my mother was an actress, so I was trying to go far away, and it is not so far away, as sometimes we work together. I think I am very influenced by the story of my family.
Paul Risker: Going back to Antonioni, I compared your film to La Notte in my review.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: There is something about the spaces in general in Antonioni. How landscapes and how the space influences the characters. I don't know if it is in a concept that there is a connection, but I am happy if there is something because I love Antonioni, and he is one of my favourite directors.
With the landscape in Thursday Till Sunday I was thinking of how to start with these characters as a main character of the land in the car, with colours, and then they gradually lose the colour, and they become part of the landscape. In the end they are just a piece of the set, even the characters. It is just the same thing.
Paul Risker: What is next for you?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: I am currently writing a new script called Late to Die Young. It is something that is still in progress, and it is a new step for me, because again it is a film with families, though a portrait of a bigger group. It is about a community living in isolation and there is a big forest fire. There are three main characters who are kids or teenagers, and how they feel older than they are. It has to do with this film (Thursday Till Sunday), but it is another level of storytelling. I wanted to make a film a bit more external in emotions, because it also has to do with these kids who are older than Lucia and her brother. I want the film to feel this new weight. Thursday till Sunday has to do with this contained emotion that is more childish, and now this will be a more teenager orientated film, exploring in another direction.
I wanted to fulfil the necessity or need to shoot again. I don't have the feeling that I can shoot a film a year, or maybe yes, but I wanted to take some time, because I am directing when I am writing. I was working too much with Thursday Till Sunday last year, and this year will be a quieter year I hope, so I am planning to write and to direct while I am writing because it is the way I work.
Also I have other little projects. I just shot a short film in the south of Chile with a Polish filmmaker for a festival in Copenhagen, and so we are editing now. I was invited to shoot a film in Lisbon. I will do this this year and I will be writing, and I will hope to receive the funds to shoot Late to Die Young in 2014.
Many thanks to Dominga Sotomayor Castillo for taking the time for this interview.
Paul Risker is co-editor in chief of Wages of Film, freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth and Scream The Horror Magazine.
Paul Risker: What was the inspiration and genesis for Thursday Till Sunday?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: All of my short films as well as Thursday Till Sunday have come from personal things that surround me. I'm not going very far to find stories. I think it is an observation of family situations and people that I know. I only like to go so far; so in a way it is like a personal starting point, but then the fiction is growing up in the middle. Specifically in this film the inspiration was a picture I found; the picture seen in the film of the two kids on the roof of the car.
So I found this picture of my cousin Manuel and I, and we were travelling on the roof of the car on a trip. It was very funny, because when I saw the picture three or four years ago, I remembered how great this trip was, and this moment. I had the feeling that this was one of the most amazing moments of my childhood, but at the same time all these years later I realised how dangerous and extreme the idea to put us on the roof was.
This picture was the starting point because I had this idea to make a film of two different trips: of these kids against the wind on the roof, and this couple inside with the confinement and the crisis. Then there was a collection of images from my childhood, this feeling of travelling, more like the image and the physical feeling rather than in the geographical sense. This feeling of travelling in the back seat of the car, and all the games, all the things that happen in the confinement.
Paul Risker: There is this sense of inertia in Thursday Till Sunday. It's a very slow moving film, yet all the way through there is this tension, and at first it doesn't necessarily feel as though the danger is from within, but rather that it could be from the landscape, from other people travelling along the road. But gradually you realise the whole film is about the collapse of a family, and threat is an internal one.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: The idea was to have this balance between the danger and the excitement, and I am interested in how the familiar can become threatening at the same time. It is a reflection of family, of the roles of the family and how all of these characters are in a way alone. There is a tension from something that is not happening, and at the end there is this collapse of the family.
Paul Risker: The film is building towards this moment, the realisation for the children that everything is set to change once the trip is over.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: What was interesting for me was to try in both the script and through the mise en scene to be close to the children's discomfort. There is that sense of danger when the kids feel scared. For example, when Lucia is alone in the desert for ten minutes, to her it is like an eternal abandonment. It is a game of how little things for kids so, at times means more danger; more transcendental trauma.
Paul Risker: You have remarked of your fascination of the connection between film and memory. One of the themes in the film is that you are presenting the children with events that will be the seeds for future memories, both happy and sad.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: The script is structured like a memory of someone looking back at their childhood. It is so amazing and so sad at the same time, and I was trying to capture how kids feel all of this emotion simultaneously; how complex it is to feel when you are little and how deep you feel. What interested me about the structure was the idea of being between things. It is not about big events; it is more about what is in the middle, and what is in the middle is related by the kids. How kids remember trips, and how kids also arrive at the situations is connected with a distance; in a fragmented way, arriving later to the moments, hearing just part of a discussion. So I think the viewer needs to share in the discomfort of the kids in the back seat looking at the backs of the parents.
Paul Risker: There are those scenes featuring dialogue, but a portion of the film functions as a silent film, in which we are required to observe the physical presence of the characters; their connections through how they interact with one another.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: I like it when mise-en-scene by itself is conflicted, and so I was trying to create that with the image, always very close to the camera.
The film was shot with a physical memory to mind; how I was looking and how I was listening when I was little. This is my most autobiographical film, not the story itself but the physical feeling of travelling in the back seat of the car. I was trying with the camera to be close to this feeling of being a kid. I like it when little details are revealing, but not through words.
It is also about how kids do not understand by words. Maybe they don't understand what their parents are talking about, but they feel it on another level.
Paul Risker: To talk about your placement of the audience. It doesn't feel as though you are inviting us in, or rather that you are attempting to create a traditional immersive experience that will draw us into the film. It feels as though you are keeping us back, to a position of being almost voyeurs on this private story, the private lives of these characters.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It's what I was saying at the beginning, how this daily situation, how these very tedious and familiar things can become threatening. My idea was to be very close with this family inside the car. The camera is always inside, the length is always inside, and then when they arrive in the desert we leave them, and we have the feeling of how insignificant or how small they are in the big scenario.
It is a reflection of this, about the distance, and how these little things are seen through the bigger scenario. Lucia also feels like this when she looks through the window and she says, "I don't like it when it looks like this." She means the Earth and how small they are in this crisis. This decision has to do with these feelings of childhood, because when you are little you have more open fears, but you learn how to forget the fear of how fragile and small we are.
Paul Risker: So, we are in the car with these characters, we pull back and we then realise that this is just one small story amongst many small stories. The idea of human existence as insignificant? Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It is a very simple idea. The relationship between kids and society when you are little is similar; how the places still exist when you are not looking at them, how small we are, how round the Earth is, and how there is something of these feelings in the film. These childhood feelings are reflected in the film and how kids project their problems in another way, in dreams. When Lucia wanted to be alone at night, I think there was an existential anxiety that I was trying to capture. For me it was very important to make it in film, in Super 16, because the genesis of the film has to do with capturing something; capturing the past.
For me the materiality of capturing this in cinema was one of the important things. It is like an old picture that is losing its colours, of this childhood trip. Everything was scripted, it wasn't improvised. The idea was to try to capture something alive, to make a document of childhood through the fiction. Real feelings, because these are not big things happening. It was more to try to capture a time that is passing, and for me the film is like a prism, a memory but in present tense. It is why it is so timeless, because it has something the 80s and 90s of my childhood, but it's more like a generic childhood in that I was trying to make it timeless.
Paul Risker: You are only willing to provide us with a certain amount of information, to exist with an ambiguity, not answering all the questions, not explaining everything, but forcing the audience to piece the puzzle together for themselves. What are your thoughts on mainstream narrative filmmaking compared to the kind of film your directorial debut represents?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: For me cinema has more to do with empty spaces rather than completing the scene. Thursday Till Sunday is a film that is an invitation to open your mind. For me the mise-en-scene and my decisions can provoke a feeling and make a reflection from the cinema; not from the story. This films invites you to be in the backseat with the kids, and the viewer is trying to complete as the kids are doing in little parts. What is important as I have said is not what happens; it is more the feeling. It is a film that you have the time to complete with your own memories. I'm not interested in films where everything is given. For me, I like the exercise of thought in film.
Paul Risker: You are a proponent of the cinema of feeling rather than intense and traditional narrative. You are more interested in expressing characters' feelings, and creating that sense of feeling.
As a first film it was an exploration, and also an opportunity to work with landscapes in a very dramatic way. What would make me happy now is if people feel a connection with the film. It's not only a film for those who know about cinema. It is a film for someone who doesn't study cinema, who is not a critic. Every viewer can connect with childhood, and it is a very simple film. It is four people inside a car. It could happen anywhere; it could happen everywhere, but at the same time it is very Chilean.
I am not motivated to make a political film, because my generation is the least political in Chile. I don't have a political story, so for me it is not natural, and I don't like to go so far away from what I have observed. But for me it is a film that talks about Chilean people, or how we don't know how to communicate with each other, or a specific personality. It is also political and observes how family works here in very specific little elements. The film's couple is kind of middle class, but they are also a little cultured and they have a maid. It is a very specific Chilean family that wasn't perhaps portrayed before, usually portrayed through the higher class or the lower class. This is also Chile, and when people ask about my lack of interest in political cinema, for me cinema is political anyway.
This is my point of view of how we are living, and it is my point of view of life, and I am making the point with a film, and this is a political act. Also my country is reflected in this car.
Paul Risker: Thursday Till Sunday shows that you don't need to be deliberate in everything you say, that the audience can pick up on themes and metaphors, such as the way in which you use the landscape. You don't need to go out to make a political film that means something, because that naturally seems to exist in films and comes through in an idea.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It is not about giving answers or giving meanings. It is more to give an experience of understanding yourself. It is more that the meaning is there and the meaning is for everybody. The meaning is so open, and what I like about the point of view of the kids in the film is that it is not about who is the bad guy, it is about the fragility of this couple through the eyes of the kids.
It is not important why they are splitting up or who is the one who is leaving the other one. I like this distance and this view without the prejudice that kids have.
Paul Risker: Was it an intention to create a film that people could read differently?
What is important is the effect of this crisis on the kids. So there is this ambiguity, but for me it was him who was leaving here, and he has already rented an apartment.
Nobody really changes, and for me with the character of the mother there is a little hope of change. She realises after camping that she can be loved and she doesn't want to be with someone who doesn't love her. I think she is more fragile at the beginning of the film, and then she realises that maybe someone can love her when this other guy appears. I don't think she likes this other guy, but it is like hope. In the beginning he is very sure about leaving her and his family, but he is also very fragile.
Paul Risker: Is there a sense of uncertainty at the end of the film for you?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: By the end you don't know what will happen. Probably it is the last family trip, but I didn't want to make a film of a last family trip. It is just a weekend, and when you are dealing with a couple, there is just not that one last trip, or maybe there are, but it is more like a long process. So I'd like it to be one of the last family trips, but my feeling is that even if they split up after the film, they are more connected at the end.
For Lucia this is a trip of loss of innocence. She realises how human her parents are and how complex the world is, but at the same time she connects with her father. At the beginning he's like a ghost, and at the end she has a connection with him, and they will be closer now, even if her parents are not together. It is also a reflection of how important the family is itself. I think it is more important to have real connections than to be together as a concept.
Paul Risker: Would you agree that sad memories are just as important as happy memories?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It comes together, and for me it is why the picture of the kids on the roof is interests me; this polarity. It was the best memory and the most dangerous thing at the same time, and the film has this ability; the trip the best and the worst at the same time. It was the first time Lucia drove the car, and at the same time it was so sad.
I think life is like this, and when you are a kid you have both at the same time. These memories are going to be a part of Lucia's future and this trip is important because the happy and the sad memories are part of her. It is a story of growing up.
Paul Risker: Were there any films that were a particular source of inspiration?Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: I grew up without television and electricity. I consider myself without much direct influence from films, television, at least in my childhood. Then I started seeing a lot of films. This film's inspiration comes more from pictures of my childhood. I was influenced by Antonioni, the films of Kirostami, Haneke, Roy Anderson and Cassavettes. I am very interested in the filmmakers who have something conflicted in the mise-en-scene by itself.
Thursday Till Sunday is cinematic, it couldn't be a book. It is very physical in the way it is shot. Also the aesthetic of my family, because my mother is an actress, and there is a lot of me coming from there, and my grandmother and aunt are painters, I think there are colours and shapes that come from my family.
Paul Risker: So it feels natural for you to be a filmmaker?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: It is funny, because when I was planning to study cinema, I wanted to do something different from the rest of my family. I didn't want to be an actress because my mother was an actress, so I was trying to go far away, and it is not so far away, as sometimes we work together. I think I am very influenced by the story of my family.
Paul Risker: Going back to Antonioni, I compared your film to La Notte in my review.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: There is something about the spaces in general in Antonioni. How landscapes and how the space influences the characters. I don't know if it is in a concept that there is a connection, but I am happy if there is something because I love Antonioni, and he is one of my favourite directors.
With the landscape in Thursday Till Sunday I was thinking of how to start with these characters as a main character of the land in the car, with colours, and then they gradually lose the colour, and they become part of the landscape. In the end they are just a piece of the set, even the characters. It is just the same thing.
Paul Risker: What is next for you?
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo: I am currently writing a new script called Late to Die Young. It is something that is still in progress, and it is a new step for me, because again it is a film with families, though a portrait of a bigger group. It is about a community living in isolation and there is a big forest fire. There are three main characters who are kids or teenagers, and how they feel older than they are. It has to do with this film (Thursday Till Sunday), but it is another level of storytelling. I wanted to make a film a bit more external in emotions, because it also has to do with these kids who are older than Lucia and her brother. I want the film to feel this new weight. Thursday till Sunday has to do with this contained emotion that is more childish, and now this will be a more teenager orientated film, exploring in another direction.
I wanted to fulfil the necessity or need to shoot again. I don't have the feeling that I can shoot a film a year, or maybe yes, but I wanted to take some time, because I am directing when I am writing. I was working too much with Thursday Till Sunday last year, and this year will be a quieter year I hope, so I am planning to write and to direct while I am writing because it is the way I work.
Also I have other little projects. I just shot a short film in the south of Chile with a Polish filmmaker for a festival in Copenhagen, and so we are editing now. I was invited to shoot a film in Lisbon. I will do this this year and I will be writing, and I will hope to receive the funds to shoot Late to Die Young in 2014.
Many thanks to Dominga Sotomayor Castillo for taking the time for this interview.
Paul Risker is co-editor in chief of Wages of Film, freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth and Scream The Horror Magazine.