"The loved one" : Rodrigo Sorogoyen directs Javier Bardem in a story of a tense reunion between a director father and his daughter

In The loved onethe Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen stars Javier Bardem in the shoes of a director who tries to reconnect with his daughter whom he has always abandoned, by offering her the leading role in his new film. In line with Sentimental value, Grand Jury Prize 2025, The loved onepresented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2026, is released in theaters the same day.

Esteban Martinez (Javier Bardem), a famous director based in the United States, returns to the country to shoot his new film. He chose Emilia (Victoria Luengo), his daughter, whom he has not seen for thirteen years, to play the main role. By accepting her father’s proposal, the young woman discovers the true face of this man about whom she only knows what she has been told. This confrontation, on the set, but also behind the scenes, reopens the wounds of the past for the father and the daughter, and provokes excesses on the part of the director which endanger the rest of the filming.

This new film from the director of Madre (2020) andThe Beasts (2022) addresses the question of authorship, within the framework of cinema. On the set, Emilia is for Esteban Martinez not only the main actress in his film, but also his daughter. This proposition supports the idea of ​​power relations, which are exercised here in two ways. This particular moment of filming, suspended and cut off from the rest of the world, behind closed doors, becomes a scene where feelings are expressed in an exacerbated manner, and where the violence of power relations is exercised.

The bold staging conveys all the complexity of the feelings that animate the characters. The tension linked to this story of betrayal and paternal abandonment is established from the first scene, a long sequence constructed in reverse shot, with a camera very close to the faces, in long focal length, with both in the lead. “I wanted the cameras very far away to symbolize that they are very far from each other, to signify this long absence. But a person who is very absent can also be very present for you because you think about them all the time. So that’s why in this scene, I really wanted the body of one is present in the image of the other”explains Rodrigo Sorogoyen in an interview with franceinfo Culture. The sound is also focused on the exchanges between the two characters, as if the world around them did not exist. “Because for her, it’s only him, in this meal, that matters. She doesn’t care about all the other things. She doesn’t see the rest”specifies the director.

With this long prologue, an introduction with a strong staging bias, the director projects us right into the eye of the storm of this story, into the space and time of this father and this daughter. This opening scene poses the two characters in an organic way, gives keys to the past, and allows us to measure the gulf that separates Emilia, her wounds, her resentment towards her father, in an unstable balance between denial, embarrassment, guilt, and an awkward surge of love that he extends to his daughter.

No flashbacks, or almost. Emilia’s childhood wounds, who missed a father, are expressed in the present tense. Her pain awakens when she sees Esteban from afar, in the banality of an everyday scene – a meal shared with his wife and his two other young children – capable of forming a family where he once failed with her and his mother.

The tension explodes later, in a filming scene which requires several takes, which begins with mad laughter from the crew, and ends in psychological violence which will call into question the rest of the production of the film. “We needed a scene where the monster inside him appears. Because we tell the viewer that he’s a horrible, violent character, but we don’t see that at all from him. He’s great, kind to his children, he laughs with the team… So we built the script for that, to achieve that. “That, at this scene where he loses control, patience, and becomes very violent”, explains the director.

How far can a director go with his actors, or a father with his daughter whom he says he wants to “help”? The director plays on this dual function of the father and the director who here merge. To move forward in his work, and to find his daughter’s heart, Esteban will have no other choice than to change paradigms. “We wanted to talk through the story of a father and his daughter, about power relations, hierarchy, the world of cinema, but also about how times are changing; what was accepted about certain behaviors is no longer OK today and that’s very good.” explains Rodrigo Sorogoyen. “We wondered if in reality, a member of the crew could leave a shoot, for this reason, and ultimately we said to ourselves that even if it wasn’t realistic, it was a good thing to put him in a film, to show that it’s possible, that it’s a possible option”specifies the director.

It is therefore also a question here of cinema, of fiction, and of the way in which each person tells a story to themselves or tells it to others. “For my co-writer and for myself, the story is the cornerstone of this film. For the character of Esteban, the director, the story, it is essential for him, for his image, for the story he wants to tell to the ‘loved ones’, to his wife, to his sons, to his daughter that he abandoned. And there is also the story that Emilia tells herself of her relationship with her father, which is very different. There is no common story. Everyone told their story.explains Rodrigo Sorogoyen.

The staging, which moves from color to black and white without obvious logic between fiction and reality, expresses the porosity between these two dimensions. The points of view of the two protagonists, whose stories made of projections and conjectures intertwine in a complex tangle, are the image of this relationship failed in the past, almost impossible to reconnect in the present. “A professional universe where we have to make people believe in fiction was the perfect pretext to bring cinema into this story”, specifies the director.

Rodrigo Sorogoyen adds a stone to his cinematographic work, which has been interested in human relationships and masculinity since its beginnings. The film is carried by the organic presence of Javier Barlem, who knows, with this emblematic body of virility, and a voice that he knows how to modulate to move from gentleness to brutality, embodying this character mired in his inability to express his feelings, and for this reason no doubt, filled with contained violence, ready to explode at any moment. Victoria Luengo, starring inAutofiction by Pedro Almodovar, another film in competition, plays with great accuracy this young woman who resists in silence, but with firmness, until obtaining the words she expects from her father, these words which he ends up letting go, to say “this void” left by the absence of his daughter in his life, who “dogs”to him too, “a lot”.

Titre original : “The loved one”
Genre : Drama
Réalisation : Rodrigo Sorogoyen
With : Javier Bardem, Victoria Luengo, Raul Arevalo
Pays : Spain, France
Durée: 2h25.
Sortie : May 16, 2026
Distributer : The Pact
Synopsis : World famous director Esteban Martinez returns to Spain to shoot his new film. He offers the main role to a young unknown actress, his daughter, whom he has not seen for thirteen years. The young woman accepts this wonderful opportunity, but knows that during this filming, she will confront a man whom she has never been able to consider as a father. The weight of the past threatens to reopen their wounds.