The film director Jaime Rosales has presented this Tuesday 23rd at the Museo Universidad de Navarra Petrathe film that premiered last Friday. More than a hundred students attended the screening of the film at the theater and then held a discussion with the filmmaker, in which he was accompanied by Rafael Llano, artistic director of Public Programs, Education and Film Museum, and Manuel Asin, responsible for film programming.

The Catalan director has defined his work as "a film that revolves around lies and when it is broken, it produces forgiveness and redemption". Navarra is the story of Petra - played by Bárbara Lennie - a thirty-year-old woman who, after the death of her mother, begins the search for her father, an identity that has been hidden from her all her life. Her inquiries lead her to the house of Jaume - Joan Botey-, a powerful and cruel plastic artist, where she will also meet his family and will be involved in a terrible spiral of lies. "In life we suffer and there are ups and downs, but the human being is a great survivor".

Rosales explained the reason for the title of this film: "Initially it was another one, but in the end I chose to do it like in Greek tragedies (Oedipus, Antigone, Electra), where the name of the protagonist is the title. Petra also has a strong sonority and is easy to remember, something that favored its promotion".

Moreover, in his dialogue with students he has recognized the importance of this conversation: "It is unusual in a university to be more interested in the opinion of the students than that of the professors themselves. But it happens to me. I am interested in knowing if you didn't like it and why".

He also reflected that nowadays "the public is looking for something different and without excess information. But if you don't give it, the film becomes dense and many don't understand it. You have to find a balance. My criterion has been: if with little information, someone understands it, I leave it".

During the meeting he also presented his book The pencil and the camera (La Huerta Grande, 2018), an essay written during the process of shooting the film although, as he explained, it is not a diary, but an eclectic reflection on cinema. "My way of understanding it is based on what you show and what you hide.

In addition, he also noted that the construction of Petra "is based on classic Hollywood cinema, with scripts with many adventures, but with elements of modern cinema, such as the posters -they open each fragment of the film-. It is a game between the classic and the modern".