‘Maixabel’ Director Iciar Bollaín Unpacks ‘I’m Nevenka,’ About a Landmark Sexual Harassment Case in Spain

variety.com:

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “I went to bed in one of the [hotel room] and he lay down beside me,” Nevenka Fernández, a former member of Ponferrada Municipal Council, recounts how she was raped in 2000 by her boss, Ismael Álvarez, then the all-powerful major of the city. “Why didn’t you leave?” asks Álvarez’s defence attorney in the trial sparked by Fernández when she took Álvarez to court for sexual harassment. “He was at my side.

I couldn’t move,” Fernández replies. Sold by Film Factory Ent. and playing in main Competition at this year’s San Sebastián Film Festival, Iciar Bollain’s “I’m Nevenka ” – written with Isa Campo (“Offworld”), her co-scribe on box office hit “Maixabel” – is inspired by true events which led to Álvarez becoming the first politician to be convicted of sexual harassment in Spain, in a landmark judicial sentence 15 years before the #Me Too movement, The film is not just a blow-by-blow chronicle of the events behind the ruling.

Álvarez delivers a masterclass in emotional manipulation, from belittlement – he addresses her with the childish “Quenca” – to accusing her of immaturity, of losing it, to threats, to a sudden begging for forgiveness, to sexual abuse.

Bollaín doesn’t want audiences just to follow the abuse but feel its physical and emotional collateral, fore-fronting a scene at the very beginning of the film when Nevenka (Mireia Oriol, “Alma”) abandons her job, fleeing dressed as a medieval handmaiden at a Ponferrada Templars Night procession, to her still wringing her hands several days later when she first meets her lawyer in Madrid.