They offer Antonio Banderas a movie without having to act: made with AI and by yielding his image

It was a very special film, marked by the return of a prodigal son like Antonio Banderas, by telling a story set in Malaga during the 70s ... based on a book by Antonio Soler, and because, as the director himself pointed out in SUR on Friday, «it was the beginning of my return home». In this reunion, the filmmaker from Malaga reaffirmed his connection during the re-release at the crowded Albéniz cinema of 'El camino de los ingleses', the second film directed by the actor and the latest to date. And it seems that it will be for a long time, since Banderas has confessed that, although he has handled new projects as a filmmaker for years, today he would not trade frames for the live experience at his Teatro del Soho Caixabank. At least, when it comes to directing.

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And although the actor, producer, and director from Malaga usually associates his love for theater with his beginnings as an actor in Malaga, this time his speech linked it with technology to explain that he prefers the "truth" of direct contact with the audience. It was not his only argument since he also surprised by revealing the latest offer he has on the table as a protagonist: "I have just been offered a movie with AI, meaning they offer to use my image and all I would have to do is provide my voice. I don't know if it will materialize or not, but cinema is at a very definitive moment," Banderas revealed. The character to 'portray' would be that of Hernán Cortés and the Malaga native showed his astonishment at the perfection of the result achieved with Artificial Intelligence.

The character created with AI is that of Hernán Cortés and the Malaga native showed his astonishment at the perfection of the result of the image

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Antonio Banderas, who arrived at the Albéniz accompanied by his partner, Nicole Kimpel, and where he was awaited by the mayor of Malaga, Paco de la Torre; the director of the Malaga Festival, Juan Antonio Vigar, and the writer and screenwriter Antonio Soler, seemed somewhat unenthusiastic about cinema, at least about its future as we know it at the moment. "When studios discover that technology will allow them to make movies without having to pay the prices that actors are charging, it's over," he firmly maintained, the promoter of the Teatro del Soho who, however, pointed out that "there will always be movies with flesh and blood people," although AI-generated productions are already here and here to stay.

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In the face of this change, Banderas is clear that his place is on the stage. "Theater is an art that has survived 3000 years and it will be very difficult to defeat," he stated, acknowledging that in the future there might be "robots on stages that we won't be able to tell if they are human or not, but they will have to warn us" beforehand. Therefore, the Malaga native insisted that "theater has become a refuge for truth in our time, the truth of a group of people in front of another group of people live and direct. "The more technologies advance, the more value live arts and performing arts in general will have," concluded the director of 'El camino de los ingleses'.

Actor, at 92 years old

Regarding the re-release of the film, which was also shown in 35 millimeter format as Banderas conceived it instead of digital, the Malaga director noted that we are facing a story with which he identifies and that he defined as a "poem about fatality" about a group of young people at the end of adolescence, "whose dreams did not come true, as happens with 99% of future wishes when we were 15 or 16 years old." Having said that, he smiled and added humorously: "Well, mine did."

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For his part, the producer Antonio Meliveo remembered two people who participated in the filming and are no longer with us, like the legendary actor Juan Diego and the director Regina Álvarez, while among the audience was the oldest member of the cast, the actor Lucio Romero, the suffering Grandfather of the fiction who, at 92 years old, did not want to miss this re-release.

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For his part, Antonio Soler recalled what it meant to work alongside the "indomitable" Antonio Banderas. And it is that the author of the original novel and screenwriter of the film was also on set with the director and "after filming, we went every day to see it on the screen." Therefore, he remembers that intense recording as "a marathon race" from which he ended up "with a severe indigestion." Therefore, after two decades, "I was curious to see the film now" to see how it had aged, something he did last year with his own book for the re-edition in Galaxia Gutenberg. "I checked that it had held up with the purpose I wanted to express and I believe the film did too," Soler concluded.