What is a cloistered nun doing locked up in a monastery all her life? Does the contemplative life make sense in this world? Are people who choose this kind of life rare? Do they flee or are they afraid of the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are some of the issues that appear in today's collective imagination when talking about cloistered life. However, as Santos Blanco, director of this feature film, points out, \"free, freedom, is perhaps the word that is repeated most often in the documentary\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Blanco, Free<\/em> has been his first film. Blanco, owner of Variopinto productions<\/em>has worked mainly in the field of advertising in the last 12 years, although he had made some short documentaries: \"Seven years ago we made a short documentary with a medical NGO that helped in Africa and about four years ago I co-directed, with a partner, a documentary about a nomadic family in Mexico... But I had not made any film of this kind, spiritual, Christian\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"It was a surprise how the project came to us,\" describes the director. It all started during the hardest time of the confinement imposed by Covid. In those days, Borja Barragan<\/a>one of the producers called Santos. Barrag\u00e1n had received, at the time, a request for assistance from the Declausura Foundation<\/a> because there were convents and monasteries that did not even have money to eat. \"I knew nothing about cloistered life, nothing and besides we were locked up...\", recalls Santos, \"at that moment I got in touch with Luc\u00eda Gonz\u00e1lez-Barandiar\u00e1n and we devised a communication campaign to get donations for the monasteries. It was a success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once he was back to normal life, Santos Blanco, together with the Declausura Foundation, carried out two campaigns to raise awareness of cloistered life and help monastic life. \"There I began to know, in person, the life of the cloistered monks and nuns and I hallucinated,\" says Santos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \"In those moments I came across this phrase of Pope Francis: \"As a sailor on the high seas needs a lighthouse to show him the way to port, so the world needs you. Be lighthouses, for those near and above all for those far away. Be torches that accompany the journey of men and women in the dark night of time\" (Apostolic Constitution of Pope Francis, \"The world needs you. Vultum Dei Quaerere <\/em>on the feminine contemplative life, n6) The Pope puts them on the level of beacons, of referents! At that time, the idea of making a documentary began and, from then on, the \"gods\" began to happen. I talked to someone about this idea and other people \"appeared\", investors, like Antonio de la Torre...\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n Was this film a challenge? \"Any film is always a difficult challenge. As a professional challenge, a feature film is always a big one. The fact that it is a film with a Christian message has not made it more difficult,\" says Santos Blanco, \"in fact, for me it has almost been an advantage, because it had a driving force, beyond the professional, that filled me a lot. I think it has given me a lot, on the one hand, you do what you like professionally and on the other hand you know that you are doing something more than pure entertainment\".<\/p>\n\n\n\nI knew nothing about the contemplative life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n