The Committee

In the last decades, contemporary socialist political parties within Europe have veered significantly towards the "right". ”Socialists” approved laws and amended constitutions in favour of austerity measures, especially to facilitate the payment of the external debt. In the Spanish case, for example, the reform of the article 135 of the Spanish Constitution was approved during August 2011 by an alliance between right-wing People’s Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). This took place without a referendum and while much of parliament and civil society was on summer vacation.
In October 2016, the PSOE was submerged in an unprecedented political dilemma in the party's history. After the second general election in less than a year, the party went through a major internal battle on how to approach the attempt by PP leader Mariano Rajoy to form a government. An internecine war was declared within the ranks of the PSOE and 17 members of its executive committee resigned as a bloc, forcing the committee’s dissolution and the ousting the general secretary.
This is the political moment, which inspires this short film.
Seeking to go beyond the superficial reporting of the event in the media, I conducted an extensive research into what took place within the party, including the chronology of events and the statements made by various actors during those days of crisis. In particular, I have focused on the extraordinary committee meeting of the 1st October, 2016. The more I dug into what took place, the more I realised that this moment tells a much more foundational political story that needs to be told. Taking into account these events, we see a situation that was very much like Luis G. Berlanga's films – about survival instinct and characters that flow from the bile, from the darkest viscera of Spain.
I have decided to dramatize these events, to concentrate it in a limited time-frame of a short film and speak directly to the internal political machinations that took place. In working to humanise the internal political crisis within the committee, I tell the story of an individual politician who has to make a decision on where she/he/they stand, while under pressure from a range of external forces such as a powerful figure behind the party. This approach helps the viewer personalise and visualise a wider political critique of the internal party “democracy.” While such political parties seek a representation of the proletariat, the method by which they are captured by the establishment pushes them to lose socialist values to the dictates of greed and the logic of power. By keeping the identity of the party anonymous, I give the story an international flavour that seeks to go beyond Spain and the PSOE. To relate directly to the halls of euro parliamentarianism, the machinations that kept Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic primary in 2016, and reminds us of the kinds of ethical compromises one is forced to make to win control of South Africa’s ANC in 2018 or sabotaging Labour’s chances in the UK.
Politicians and other political operatives are human beings, with feelings, fears, hopes and dreams. They often join these political parties because they want to change society for the better. Each and everyone of them carries with them personal and collective baggage. The premise of this story is concerned with finding the human element within the machinations of power; depicting how people, pressured by internal conflict and the need to survive politically, have to make an existential decision about where they stand.
By giving this story both a personal and international perspective, I seek to gesture to a universal condition we all encounter in our daily lives navigating hierarchical organisational forms.
When it comes down to it, everything is politics anyway...
The narrative structure of the script is a classical one – a long sequence shot follow by an ending sequence, suddenly by an accelerated cut, in order to transmit the final crescendo tension to the audience. The long handheld sequence aims to demonstrate the urgency and the political pressure of the moment.
Regarding the color grading, we will search for a chiaroscuro look, to transmit the double standards of the characters and the dichotomy some of them are suffering. And about the sound design, the members of the party as a whole, with their reactions to the events of the story will deliver and enhance the feeling, fights and contradictions of the moment. By working with the actors in a collective way, allowing them to determine their processes to deliver, we found great on-set synergies and solutions that became visible on the screen.
In making the finale abrupt and open ended, I hope to be producing the type of cinema that "stays" with the viewer, posing questions to cause discomfort about what happens to the outcome of the secret ballot and aims catalyze debate between audience members. I therefore aim to trigger conversations over the political essence of the film, the depths with which the story reaches and the parallelism drawn to other parties and politicians worldwide.