OX BLOOD
Clàudia Munuera
Spain
Emma, an ambitious young fisherwoman, will defy the town’s veteran fishermen in hopes of fighting for her future and survival in a resourceless world.
SYNOPSIS
In a world without resources and a razed sea, Emma, an ambitious young fisherwoman desperate to earn a living, will enlist the help of her conformist and more reticent friend, Albert. Together, they will disobey the fishermen onshore to embark on a dangerous journey, in search of the forbidden blood-red coral. This forgotten treasure from the Mediterranean, which could mean the survival of the town and make them the saviours of their community, will throw them into an unknown world that will put their strength, ambition and defiance to the test.
INTENTION
Ox Blood is set in a world that could easily be a reflection of our future, a chant of defiance for a youth that is deciding between falling in line with society or breaking away from everything. Emma, our protagonist, is tired of living in a world that oppresses her and decides to take action and follow the call to adventure, looking for a new world able to understand her.
This short film was born of my desire to talk about something that I was experiencing first-hand. I was struggling with how hard it is to get a job in today’s market, how the young are overlooked and labeled as “lazy”, not being given the space to prove themselves. I soon realised that this issue had a massive outreach and that many young people in Europe were experiencing the same thing. Ox Blood was the perfect world to explore youth’s job insecurity, the generational conflict, the frustration and powerlessness I share with Emma and Albert. My interest in mythology and magical realism blends with the real issue portrayed in the film, resulting in a contemporary fable, filled with mysticism, red coral and bathed under the light of a blood moon.
DIRECTOR
Clàudia Munuera
Clàudia Munuera is a film director and editor based in Barcelona. She began her career as a director with her short film Soil (Sòl) with Sergi López and Emma Arquillué. The film won multiple awards and was screened at national and international film festivals. She is currently working on her first feature film and pre-producing her second short film.
PRODUCER
Marc Guanyabens
Marc Guanyabens founded Fractal 7 with two university colleagues before finishing his Audiovisual Communication degree. Among his most recent productions is The Strange (L’estrany), a fiction short film winner of multiple national awards. He combines his work as a producer with his work as a Production Cinema professor at Pompeu Fabra University.
Genre
Drama, Thriller
Length
15 min
Language
Catalan
Shooting location
Catalonia, Spain
Production company
Fractal 7 (Spain)
Estimated budget
€90.000
Secured funding
Institut Català d’Empreses Culturals (ICEC) - €12.000,
Looking for
Coproducers, Post-Production, International Sales