Roberto Bueso’s “El Mal Padre” reaches cinemas Nov. 20

By Daniel Okafor

Variety reports that Caramel Films will release Roberto Bueso’s “El Mal Padre” (“The Bad Father”) in Spanish theaters on Nov. 20. The film is a contender for San Sebastián’s main competition (its official awards program), and Film Factory has sold it.

Variety describes the feature as a tragicomic (mixing tragedy and comedy) account of one son’s determination not to repeat his father’s mistakes. Eduard Fernández, a four-time Goya winner and recent recipient of Spain’s National Cinematography Award, plays Santiago Balmes, a celebrated writer and academic.

After a terminal diagnosis, Balmes calls his estranged adult children together in the hope of healing, Variety reports. The premise resembles a family reunion organized by a creditor: everyone has arrived, and nobody wants the bill. Bueso’s film follows a stubborn father trying to make amends and tests how futile that effort becomes when it arrives too late.

Adam Jezierski (“Vota Juan,” 2019), Francesco Carril (“The New Years,” 2024) and Meritxell Calvo (“Burning Body,” 2023) complete the principal cast, according to Variety.

Why did fatherhood become the story?

Bueso told Variety that the film grew from two personal events: losing his father and becoming one himself. “It has been a very positive therapeutic process,” he said. He added: “Starting from my own experience gives you a solid foundation to work with conviction and honesty.”

His writing partner, Óscar Díaz Cruz, became a father for the first time while they searched for the story, Bueso said. The pair concluded that their central question was the fear of facing fatherhood and that inherited ideas about men’s roles, including fathers, could no longer apply unchanged to their generation.

Their aim, Bueso said, was to bring those ideas into dialogue rather than issue another tidy verdict.

How did Fernández make an unlikeable father watchable?

Bueso and Fernández never set specific red lines for Balmes, Bueso told Variety. They wanted him emotionally clumsy: a man who causes pain through repeated emotional mistakes, then justifies himself. Bueso said the filmmakers aimed to retain the character’s harshness while giving him charisma, humor and vulnerability.

They did not want to judge Balmes, Bueso said. Instead, they allowed him to confront the damage he had caused those around him. He praised the search for that balance as a collaborative process. The result is a father who can charm a room and still damage it, a useful contradiction rather than a convenient redemption.

What changes in scale, and why does Valencia matter?

Bueso called “El Mal Padre” more intimate than his first two features, even though he remains fond of both.

He said the third film allowed him to go deeper into his own vision and sensibility because its themes were closer and required greater maturity. He also said every project takes shape from the circumstances that produce it, while trying to remain honest about what he tells.

Variety reports that the film was shot entirely in the Comunidad Valenciana. Bueso, who is from Valencia, said he knows the region well and sees its landscapes as part of his emotional memory. His childhood summers there combined a particular quality of light with the presence of the sea and rocks.

He said sharing his idealized childhood landscape with the characters, especially the children, was a privilege. For the story, he wanted those children to return to the place where their family was still together before everything fell apart and to recreate that image, briefly.

The setting lets the children encounter the family’s former unity. Bueso gives place a practical narrative job: it holds the past without pretending the past can be repaired.

Who made “El Mal Padre”?

Variety lists Fernando Bovaira’s MOD Producciones and MOD Pictures alongside Misent Producciones and Atresmedia Cine as producers. Atresmedia, Netflix and Valencian public broadcaster À Punt participated. Spain’s ICAA provided financing, and Alex Catalán served as cinematographer (director of photography).

Bueso co-wrote the screenplay with Óscar Díaz Cruz, according to Variety. It is his third feature after “La Banda” (2019) and “Llenos de Gracia” (2022), both of which played at Spain’s Málaga Festival, and his first in San Sebastián’s main competition.

The Nov. 20 release will show whether Bueso can turn his family scrutiny into something harder than a polished exercise in inherited regret. Fernández’s uneasy balance between charm and culpability will decide how far the film travels beyond its neat setup.