“Viva”, interview with the director and protagonist Aina Clotet

Presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival within the International Critics’ Week, “Viva” marks the feature directorial debut of Aina Clotet, who also co-wrote and stars in the film.

The story follows Nora, a forty-year-old woman attempting to reconstruct her emotional life after surviving cancer. Rather than focusing on the illness itself, “Viva” examines what remains afterwards: the emotional scars, the altered perception of the body and the urgent need to feel alive again.

“We didn’t want to talk about the illness,” Aina Clotet explained. “We wanted to talk about the scar.”

For the director, the scar functions on multiple levels. It is physical, emotional and existential at once, shaping Nora’s relationship with desire, intimacy and mortality. The protagonist enters a passionate relationship with a younger man while still deeply attached to her husband, becoming trapped between emotional dependence and the desire for liberation.

Aina Clotet describes the film as the journey of a woman trying to recover her own centre, independently of the men around her.

Fear of death and fear of abandonment

At the emotional core of “Viva” lies a tension between two forms of fear: the fear of dying and the fear of being abandoned.

According to Aina Clotet, Nora’s emotional instability initially appears connected to loneliness and emotional emptiness, but those anxieties ultimately reveal something deeper.

“Deep down inside, she has fear of dying,” the filmmaker said. “She has to face that in order to free herself and understand that life is impermanent.”

The film approaches mortality not through tragedy, but through intensity. Nora constantly searches for emotional, romantic, and physical experiences that can make her feel fully present. That hunger for sensation becomes both a celebration of life and a symptom of vulnerability.

Aina Clotet was particularly interested in the connection between emotional dependence and the fear of death, exploring how romantic relationships can sometimes become attempts to escape existential anxiety.

At the same time, “Viva” avoids moral judgment. Nora is portrayed as contradictory, impulsive and occasionally self-destructive, yet always deeply human.

A luminous film about desire

espite dealing with illness, anxiety and emotional fragility, “Viva” maintains an unexpectedly bright tone. Aina Clotet repeatedly described her intention to make “a luminous movie” centred on the joy and necessity of desire.

The director explained that the film’s sensuality was never conceived as provocation, but rather as part of Nora’s gradual reappropriation of her own body after illness.

The body in “Viva” is neither idealised nor hidden. Instead, it is presented truthfully, carrying scars while remaining capable of pleasure, intimacy and transformation.

“It was important to show a body that had gone through this disease in a very natural and accepted way,” Aina Clotet noted.

That perspective extends beyond the protagonist’s physical experience and becomes a broader reflection on emotional acceptance. Nora’s journey is not about perfection or healing in a conventional sense, but about learning to inhabit uncertainty without shame.

Heat, dryness and emotional imbalance

One of the film’s strongest sensory dimensions is the constant presence of heat. Throughout “Viva”, the characters appear surrounded by oppressive warmth and dryness, creating an atmosphere of emotional exhaustion and urgency.

For Aina Clotet, this environmental choice mirrors Nora’s inner condition.

She described the protagonist as “thirsty for life and thirsty for desire,” while the recurring imagery of water becomes associated with emotional balance, sensuality and relief.

The film also subtly connects personal crisis to collective instability. Aina Clotet pointed to ecological anxiety, emotional burnout and social alienation as symptoms of a contemporary world increasingly detached from authentic human connection.

“We live in a very individualistic system,” she observed. “What moves me most in life are the bonds we create with people.”

That critique of contemporary life remains understated throughout the film, emerging through atmosphere and emotional behaviour rather than explicit political discourse.

Humour as emotional access

One of the most striking aspects of “Viva” is its tonal fluidity. The film moves naturally between vulnerability, sensuality and humour, often allowing comedy to emerge in emotionally exposed moments.

For Aina Clotet, humour was essential.

“Humour helps to talk about the deepest things,” she explained. “With humour, you can go to places that otherwise would not be easy.”

Rather than reducing emotional intensity, humour becomes a way of making fragility more accessible and truthful. The director emphasised her interest in lightness, not as avoidance, but as a means of confronting painful experiences without turning them into pure suffering.

That balance gives “Viva” a distinctive emotional rhythm, where moments of insecurity and confusion coexist with tenderness and irony.

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