Niñato

Niñato, Adrián Orr, Spain, 2017, 72 minutes

Three years ago, when the Tabakalera building was still in the rehabilitation phase and the programme involved using a space called Sukaldea (which today we might remember as our underground phase), we screened a short film entitled Buenos días resistencia. That short film already featured the character of Niñato and his family, and served as a prologue to the feature film that we now present.

David, alias Niñato, is a young, single father who spends most of the day looking after three small children. Although he is out of work, and lives in his parents’ house, the passion and hope that hip-hop music awakens in him strengthens his dedication to the education of the children. In the intimacy of his daily life, through small gestures and silences, the importance of the family unit is revealed. Oro, the youngest child, unmotivated at school, demands more and more attention. Niñato, faced with new difficulties, will endeavour to instil in them the necessary independence to deal with the new reality that confronts them.

Visions du Reel Festival, Switzerland, Jury Prize.
International Independent Film Festival of Buenos Aires, BAFICI, Best Film, International Official Competition.
International Film Festival of Quito, Best Film, Official Competition.
SEFF’17, European Film Festival of Seville, Best Film, New Waves section.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE:

“I grew up in the same neighbourhood as Niñato, the protagonist of the film and at the age of seventeen I joined his hip-hop group as a DJ. Ten years later, like other friends of mine in the neighbourhood, Niñato became father of a family. I have always admired how, despite the passage of time and his new responsibilities as a parent, he has kept his passion for making music intact. The same passion he has when he is with the children. For more than four years I have been filming the dichotomy between these two passions: Niñato as a father and Niñato as a young man trying to keep a teenager’s dream alive.

The film portrays a long process of teaching and learning that goes on between Niñato and the children; especially with Oro, the youngest. I have filmed how small gestures or a few words can acquire relevance in the present and project themselves into the future. And I have shown it in an apparent temporal continuity. I have positioned the viewer as a real-time witness of how Niñato learns to teach, to stimulate children, to continue working, to grow in autonomy and to have dreams ... Even when he now knows that his will probably not come true.”