Mikel Gurrea Turns a Locked Barcelona Church into 'Saints'

Mikel Gurrea found the premise for his new film "Saints" outside his own front door. The Barcelona director, whose previous feature "Suro" was set in the woods, wanted a story rooted in his own neighborhood — Sants, the Catalan word for saints.

"I live in Barcelona's district of Sants and, having done my previous film in the woods, this time I wanted to find fiction at my doorstep," Gurrea told Variety. M-Appeal has picked the film up for international sales. "So I started interrogating that name, Sants, which means Saints in Catalan."

That interrogation led him to a church he could never enter. "Every time I passed by, I found it closed. So I thought, a closed church is almost like a vault. Someone could steal it and I started reading about religious art robberies."

The heist mechanics, however, did not come first. The character of Lali did.

"The very first thing I wrote was Lali crying in a hospital chapel looking at the statue of a saint, at night," Gurrea said. "Once the other person in the chapel left, Lali dried her tears instantly, like an actress who was playing a role to get her way, she got up and stole the statue."

Lali proved hard to pin down from the start: a thief who might also be grieving, a performer whose performance still contains something real. "There was an ambivalence there, a playfulness and perhaps some real sorrow too," the director said. "I started following this character and everything else came from that scene."

That ambivalence shapes Lali's relationship with her estranged mother, Gloria, played by Ariadna Gil ("Pan's Labyrinth"). A woman whose instinct is to disappear gets pulled back to Barcelona into a role that demands the opposite: staying put and caring for someone.

"The clash between duty (to have to care) and want (she wants to escape, be careless, be free)," Gurrea said. "I found that tension very human and powerful."

Victoria Luengo plays Lali, reuniting with Gurrea after "Suro" on a bigger production. "Since 'Suro,' Victoria has become a dear friend. She happens to be one of the best actress that I have ever seen. So, I always want to work with her. When it was time, I offered her the part."

The character was still evolving when Luengo signed on. "There was a draft of the script, but it was early stages," Gurrea said. "From that moment onwards, Victoria and I opened a process of workshopping ideas, trips to the desert where we first encounter Lali in the film, we gave Lali a past and we bounced many ideas. All of that influenced the later drafts Francisco Kosterlitz and I wrote for the script."

"Saints" blends intimate family drama with thriller and heist conventions. Care sits at the center of both registers. "There is a heart to the film: it is Lali's relationship towards caring for her estranged mom Gloria. That is the internal," Gurrea explained. "Then, there is an external journey, which relates to Rosario and her group."

Rosario's gang draws Lali into theft, but their handling of stolen religious objects carries an unexpected tenderness. "That brings the thieving, the thrill and the heist, but also a knowledge of delicacy, appreciation and care," Gurrea said. "There is a certain ode to the gesture, which can connect to both the stealing and the caring."

Lali's two worlds eventually collapse into one another. "Little by little, Rosario becomes like an alternative mother," the director said, "and when her people get inside Gloria's house, the layers converge."

For Gurrea, these competing versions of family and attention reinforce each other rather than clash. "I think they are related and they feed each other," he said. "The type of care that I wanted to explore in the film, we can only do it if we take the time to appreciate, if we take into account, if we feel a connection. Be it objects or people."

That idea complicates the film's relationship with religion. Researching religious-art theft, Gurrea discovered Erik the Belgian, a notorious thief who targeted churches across Spain during the 20th century. His testimony reframed crime as something closer to liturgy.

"The way he described the robberies – procedural, coordinated, silent – felt almost ritualistic to me," Gurrea said. "He also talked about the buyers' feelings towards the stolen objects when delivered to them and it seemed like worship."

The director calls the contradiction irresistible. "I found these ideas very ambiguous and powerful and I wanted to explore them cinematically," he said. "After all, iconoclasm and idolatry could be understood as two faces of the same coin."

Lali's encounter with sacred objects does not lead her to reject the Catholic world associated with her mother. It opens a different discovery instead. "And here, between those two faces, between those two poles, Lali opens herself to some wonderment," Gurrea said. "Beyond duty and guilt, both very Catholic things, Lali discovers that she wants to be next to her mom in the last stages of their relationship."

After the rural setting of "Suro," "Saints" moves into the city — one of the few decisions Gurrea made in advance. "The only really premeditated thing was to find fiction in the district where I live, so this was going to be an urban film," he said. The tone follows its elusive protagonist: "I wanted it to be playful, because it is Lali's nature."

Beneath the family tensions, robberies and shifting allegiances, one aim guided the project. "As per the rest, I wanted to make a film full of mystery," Gurrea said. "Both cinematic mystery but also playing with the idea of religious mystery." With M-Appeal handling international sales, "Saints" now positions Gurrea and Luengo to build on the momentum of "Suro" for a wider audience.