{"id":5826,"date":"2026-08-13T05:37:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T05:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5826"},"modified":"2026-08-13T05:37:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T05:37:52","slug":"far-from-the-trees-director-meritxell-colell-on-turning-exile-and-endangered-languages-into-a-body-of-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5826","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Far From the Trees\u2019 Director Meritxell Colell on Turning Exile and Endangered Languages Into a \u2018Body of Memory\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tIn \u201cFar From the Trees,\u201d (\u201cLejos de los \u00e1rboles\u201d) Meritxell Colell asks viewers to listen before they try to understand.<\/p>\n

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\n\tPremiering in Locarno\u2019s international competition, the Spain-Italy-Peru production from Allegra Films follows Adela, a 50-year-old Mexican sound artist who travels from the Peruvian jungle to the Andes recording endangered languages. Accompanied by a guide and translator, she is continuing the work of her grandfather, a Catalan Republican exiled in Mexico. But news of her grandmother\u2019s possible death fractures the journey, drawing Adela into childhood memories, family silences and fantastical visions.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the director, the film began with an absence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c\u2018Lejos de los \u00e1rboles\u2019 came into being in 2020 following the death of a very close family member. At the time, I knew only that I wanted to address the inability to say goodbye\u2014the inability to view a dead body and the emotions that entails\u2014and to link this to sound,\u201d Colell told Variety.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tShe initially searched for displaced or migrant sound artists and encountered Ang\u00e9lica Castell\u00f3, a Mexico-born, Vienna-based composer whose grandfather had also gone into exile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe film emerged from her story and those initial impulses; years later, I realized it also connected deeply with my own life \u2013 specifically, with the legacy of silence passed down by my grandparents,\u201d Colell explained.<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than reconstructing her own family history directly, she created Adela: a fictional figure whose identity is formed by migration, artistic vocation and the simple fact of being often elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was determined to center the film on the complexity of hybrid identities shaped by exile and migration \u2013identities where the status of \u2018foreigner\u2019 becomes the self \u2013 and on the burden of that inheritance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe geographical distance was crucial. Adela follows her grandfather\u2019s footsteps while transforming his political and anthropological work into art, weaving a sound map from languages at risk of disappearing. The connection between Indigenous languages in Peru and Catalan exile was not part of the earliest drafts, but became the idea that brought the film into focus.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOnce the idea of vulnerable languages came up, everything fell into place,\u201d said Colell. \u201cIt became clear that her work was carrying on her grandfather\u2019s legacy, adding a new dimension to his figure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe grandfather became an activist-anthropologist dedicated to recovering native languages in Mexico, a calling linked to his flight from a Catalonia where Franco\u2019s regime suppressed languages other than Castillian Spanish.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn a way, the film is an ode to the beauty of languages, to their collective value, and to multilingualism as a viable social reality,\u201d Colell says. \u201cLanguage is a form of thought, a way of seeing and inhabiting the world. We don\u2019t necessarily have to understand every form; we simply need to listen to them, however we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat principle shapes the film itself. We hear the birds, wind, voices, music, the whirr of a grandmother\u2019s sewing machine and a thud against a trunk of a tree.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSound is essential in cinema \u2013 not only on narrative and contextual levels but also on perceptual and emotional ones,\u201d observed Colell. \u201cThat is why I was so eager to make a film featuring a sound artist as the protagonist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film\u2019s Super 16mm passages, which inhabit memories, visions and reveries, were shot without synchronized sound. The voices of Adela\u2019s grandparents and Paula were recorded separately, leaving Castell\u00f3 free to build what Colell calls \u201ca sonic tapestry woven from a multitude of sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCastell\u00f3\u2019s presence reshaped the film over years of residencies, meetings and debate. The director was determined, however, that Adela would firmly be fictional rather than becoming a portrait of the performer.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cIt was a way to lighten the role, turn it into a game, and distance it from reality,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was crucial for me to portray a person in her fifties who had left her home country to pursue her passion\u2013 music \u2013 and to depict a type of woman rarely seen on screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs time went on, my initial intuition upon meeting her was confirmed: She was the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tProducer Mayca Sanz L-Higueras began assembling the project in 2021, initially seeking a European structure that could connect with Latin America through Ibermedia. Italy\u2019s Exit Media joined first; Peru\u2019s Animalita Cine later came on board, while RTVE helped complete the financing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn Peru, the biggest challenge has been finding someone willing to commit to filming with a fiction crew \u2013 albeit a very small one \u2013 in a country completely unprepared for such a project, and with a story that required the commitment of non-professional actors whom the director had sought out, selected and worked with over time, following location scouting trips spanning three years,\u201d said Sanz.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe shoot unfolded in five blocks over more than a year, beginning in February 2024 and ending with Teresita S\u00e1nchez\u2019s scenes in July 2025. Colell also became a mother during production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt times, I worried that shooting in such fragmented stages might result in something of a Frankenstein\u2019s monster; I\u2019m used to filming in chronological order,\u201d she says. \u201cThe surprise came when we started editing and saw that everything actually fit together perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Allegra Films, Locarno\u2019s selection validates a leap into a more ambitious international model. For Colell, it offers a setting suited to a film that resists tidy explanations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI love open cinema\u2013 films that engage the viewer and connect them to their own lived experience. Cinema that pierces you and settles deep in your gut, beneath your skin, in your chest,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe hopes younger viewers will leave the screening wanting to investigate the history of exile, or to ask their own relatives what was never said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe film speaks to the need to listen, the importance of passing things on, and how we people act as both transmitters and receivers of memory,\u201d said Colell. \u201cAnd, in a sense, the film itself is a body of memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe collaboration between director and lead allows \u201cFar From the Trees\u201d to examine the cost of building a life elsewhere. Adela\u2019s strained relationship with those tasked with caring for her grandmother, raises questions about who stays, who leaves and who inherits responsibility.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDistance is inherently complicated, yet it can also be liberating,\u201d said Colell. \u201cI wanted to explore this issue without judgment: to discuss the consequences of living far from family, how that shapes one\u2019s identity, and how it affects those who take on caregiving duties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe recalls Castell\u00f3 telling her: \u201cI am a permanent foreigner. My home \u2013 my refuge \u2013 is sound. Music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat statement encapsulates the film\u2019s central quest,\u201d Colell concludes. \u201cI would love for the film itself to become that home, that refuge.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Meritxell Colell discusses Locarno contender ‘Far From the Trees,’ a meditation on exile, grief, endangered languages and memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970],"tags":[4543,4544],"class_list":["post-5826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global","tag-locarno-international-film-festival","tag-meritxell-colell"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Far From the Trees\u2019 Director Meritxell Colell on Turning Exile and Endangered Languages Into a \u2018Body of Memory\u2019 - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5826\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Far From the Trees\u2019 Director Meritxell Colell on Turning Exile and Endangered Languages Into a \u2018Body of Memory\u2019 - 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