Director: Inma De Reyes
Producers: Aimara Reques
Coproducers: Beth Earl, Ronny Merdinger of Rustic Canyon
Cast: Borja Miranda, Erik Miranda, Matias Miranda, Raquel Miranda
Production company: Aconite Productions
Support: Chicken & Egg Pictures and Women Make Movies
Screen Scotland support: The film accessed £17,400 through our Film Development and Production Fund to support Scotland-based first time director Inma De Reyes complete the edit of Sandcastles with established and respected Scottish editor, Colin Monie.
Synopsis
Filmed over the course of five years, Sandcastles follows Borja, a young boy who grows up oppressed by the weight of his family’s hopes and the lack of options for his own future. Like most kids in his provincial Spanish town of Castellon, Borja doesn’t see a future outside of the town’s parameters beyond orange fields, farming, fishing and bullfighting.
Borja and his younger brother are being raised by their mother who struggles to make ends meet and patriarch grandfather Matias who pins his own unfulfilled dreams of becoming a professional bullfighter onto his grandchild, with the hopes that it will get the family out of poverty. But the reality of bullfighting today is not as grandfather remembers it; yet the family believes Borja will be the one who will make it against all odds.
More information
The film will feature in BFI London Film Festival's 2022 Works In Progress strand.
Director's Biography
Inma de Reyes is a Spanish film director based in Edinburgh. Her debut documentary short, To Be A Torero, premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2018. Her work has included Vivir Bailando, a short film for The Scottish Documentary Institute's Bridging The Gap that premiered at the 2019 Edinburgh International Film Festival; Eighty Serbian Dinars for FilmArt and Isabel’s Independence, a 30-minute documentary about a Spanish immigrant in Edinburgh, aired in August 2022 by BBC Scotland. Sandcastles is Inma's first feature film, co-produced by Aconite Productions and Rustic Canyon, in association with Screen Scotland, Chicken & Egg Pictures and Women Make Movies.
Images courtesy of Aconite Productions