Still: Like Any Other Mortal - Maria Molina Peiró

In Spanish director Maria Molina Peiró’s lyrical and impressionistic Like Any Other Mortal (Como Todo Mortal), selected for CPH:DOX Next:Wave Competition, a remote robot searches a distant planet both for minerals and signs of life, while far way, beside one of the oldest mines in the world, inhabitants live surrounded by mountains of mineral waste under which are buried both towns and memories.

The setting is Río Tinto, in Andalusia, whose blood-red landscape resembles the tundra of Mars, and is even referred to as “Mars on Earth.”

Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of the terrain, astrobiologists investigate the mysterious extremophile bacteria that may very well challenge ideas about evolution.

In her investigation, Molina Peiró blends science fiction, folklore, lyricism and real science, as she explores the diverse social, historical, cultural and biological strata existing between these two diverse, but connected, worlds. What’s more, in a film of such micro/macro significance, she allows for a flamenco lament to give voice to humankind’s inherent need and desire for transcendence.

“The thing that I knew from the very beginning was that the main protagonist of this place was not even the people or the landscape, but its ecosystem that extends far beyond its own physical and temporal frontiers or limits,” Molina Peiró tells SEE NL, adding that she was propelled down this road of microbial discovery after a conversation with astrobiologist Ricardo Amils Pibernat. 

“He started to tell me about how human technology is insignificant compared with the natural technology developed with this extremophile bacteria, and how they [the bacteria] had to inhabit the Earth,” the director continues. “He told me his hypothesis [that] these extremophile bacteria go from one planet to the others to colonise, and have this mission which is just to maintain life in the universe.”

She further quotes the scientific adage, that humans may go dancing but it’s micro-organisms who are playing the music.

“Then, I began to look at Rio Tinto in a very different way because what this astrobiologist was saying suddenly made the landscape make sense, because the natural and historical strata of Rio Tinto is all connected through this common element of the extremophile that lives deep underground,” Molina Peiró adds of the dramatic terrain on which the film plays out.

The director now lives between Madrid and Amsterdam, but was a full resident of the Dutch city when she started developing the film alongside Manon Bovenkerk of near/by film. She further points out that the Netherlands Film Fund were very supportive from the word go. “They supported the film. They believed in the film. I cannot be more happy with the support they gave.”

Like Any Other Mortal is furthermore a film of opposites and contrasts, as we literally descend from high in the Solar System to the very bottom of the Andalusian mines with their microbial inhabitants. 

Also, within a film of such scientific intent, we see much religious ritual, as observed within the Catholic south of Spain. Towards the end, we see the procession for Santa Barbara, when the parishioners say a special prayer for the “miners of the stars.”

“At first, the film was more focused on science and more atheistic, but when I arrived to this landscape I suddenly saw this old Rio Tinto town that is covered with all these mountains of mineral waste from the Industrial Revolution,” says Molina Peiró. 

“It is the same landscape that NASA used to imagine the future of Mars colonisation, but there’s also all the memories of these miners, and so much melancholy. So the human part had to be there, and I wanted to connect with the social part of this landscape in a deeper way in what became a very impressionistic film,” she signs off.

Find out more about CPH:DOX here.