Toronto Film Festival Dailies

THE RYE HORN

TIFF 2023

Director:  Jaione Camborda and Actress: Janet Novas.

By Emmanuel Itier

Director Jaione Camorda, who did the charismatic ‘Arima’ in 2019, is back with a beautiful new film: ‘O Corno’ aka ‘The Rye Horn’. It follows the journey of Maria who earns a living fishing. Suddenly her life will swith into a fight for her survival. This is an intense and dramatic, so cinematographically compelling. It will moves you inside out and you will feel transformed after watching this “tour de force”. Jaione was kind enough to seat down with us during TIFF and to answer a few question.

Q: What does Tiff mean to you?

Jaione: It’s a special moment to be here as we wanted to see how the audience would react to our movie. From Tiff we go to the San Sebastian film festival.

Janet: For me it’s such a fantastic opportunity to be here as this is my first movie as an actress. Toronto is fantastic and it’s wonderful to meet all these people attending the festival. It’s very special for me to be in Canada with a movie from Galicia, where I’m from.

Q; Why this film and what attracted to do this film?

Jaione: For sure I needed a strong connection with the subject matter and the story to be committed and to direct this movie. In a way it was inspired by my own journey with maternity. I wanted to share my point of view about it with an audience.

Janet: Well, the script was about a woman from Galicea where I’m from. This was the first attraction to be part of this film. I’m a dancer and I work a lot with a “memory” system. I also connected with the maternity aspect which is something I’m dealing with now.

Q: What were your main challenges making this film?

Janet: For me it was a physical challenge because I had, at times, to pretend I could not dance. And I’m a professional dancer. So, to pretend not be able to do so was quite difficult. Also, it was hard for me to see myself as a character.

Jaione: The challenge was to make sure people relate to the picture and its themes. It was tough to make a film taking place in the 70’s but that was speaking with an audience of 2023. Also, it was quite a challenge to film with super young babies.