“Red Princesses” director Laura Astorga credits her background as a casting director for bringing out the magnificent performances in first-time child actresses Valeria Conejo, Aura Dinarte and Carina Zuñiga.
Astorga, who makes her directorial debut with the coming-of-age drama selected to be Costa Rica’s Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film this year, told an audience attending TheWrap‘s Award Series screening at the iPic Theater in Los Angeles on Thursday that she workshopped over a 1,500 kids for months after a massive casting call to select her stars.
“There are six girls in different levels of the cast. We started like six months before, with a big process. Workshop, workshop, workshop,” Astorga said during the Q&A. “We developed them, and that became the casting.”
The long process worked, because the girls’ performances were praised by audience members, as well as critics before them. Conejo and Dinarte, now 15 years old, were 12 when they shot their scenes for Astorga’s autobiographical film following a pair of sisters caught between unhappy parents, doubling as Sandinista revolutionaries, on the verge of separation, or even worse, suffering serious harm from their political enemies.
The girls’ journey is just as emotional, as it is confusing for them, since they can’t possibly understand what is going on, yet are asked by their parents to conceal it. Still, their prying eyes and ears manage to learn more about their parents’ deteriorating relationship than their own father, played by Fernando Bolanos, does.
When the cast was asked what the most difficult scene was to perform, the three young actresses attending the screening were unanimous in answering that no particular moment was more difficult than another.
“A lot of people ask me if this is a really hard process, but I just don’t think so,” Conejo (pictured left) said. “My character was really different than who I was, but that’s really interesting to me, because I needed to make a distinction.”
“I don’t have any scenes that were difficult for me to perform, because any person with talent would do the same thing, just what I had to do at this moment,” Zuñiga said.
Their answers were proof of the effectiveness of Astorga’s unconventional process.
The actresses were never given a script to read, and their dialogue was based on what they developed in rehearsals. What audiences see on screen is simply what Astorga and cinematographer Julio Costantini captured during the 47-day shoot.
“I have to say, we play a lot. I like to work with actors playing roles,” Astorga said. “For me the role is more important than dialogue.”
While the production was smooth sailing for the children, Astorga hit a major bump in the road 10 days before filming began when her director of photography quit, leaving producers scrambling to find a replacement, and voiding much of the pre-production plans. Astorga, however, said the hardest part of the film was not making it, but deciding to produce one that is so personal.
“For me it is kind of easy, and kind of complex,” Astorga said. “It is an autobiographical movie, and because of that it is really easy to get the material, but it’s very hard to decide to do that kind of film.”