Bilbao (EFE)
Cormenzana’s new film work is a musical about the story of a professor displaced to a town who dreams of going on stage.
Due to cancer, he will share a bus that transports several people from their towns to the Bilbao hospital where they receive their treatments.
Although the cast is led by Dani Rovira and Susana Abaitua, the film has an ensemble cast made up of Elena Irureta, Antonio Durán “Morris”, Nagore Aramburu and Andrés Gertrúdix, and the special collaboration of Roberto Álamo and original songs by Manuela Vellés, with script by Edu Solà and Cormenzana himself.
As the filmmaker explained in a meeting with the media in Bilbao, the project was born when three years ago he traveled to see some relatives.
The actor Dani Rovira (i) during the filming of the film “El bus de la vida”, by director Ibon Cormenzana (d), in Bilbao. EFE/Miguel Toña
One of them told him that they had detected cancer in his ear, and “far from being an uncomfortable subject”, he began to explain what his routine had been like since then.
A trip to the hospital
“He told me that they traveled to the hospital in a free bus shared with other patients and that this space of light, laughter and complicity is known as ‘The Bus of Life’”, he commented.
Cormenzana explained that he thought of the actor Dani Rovira, who suffered a blood cancer (Hodgkin’s lymphoma) in 2020 from which he has fully recovered, for the main role, despite having suffered this serious cellular alteration of the organism because it is a actor you like
“It was not clear to me that I was going to accept the role -he has acknowledged-, precisely because of what happened to him, but he read the script and he liked it a lot, we met to talk and here we are because I thought it was a topic to talk about in a movie” , he emphasized.
Rovira: The script moved me inside
Dani Rovira, for his part, has also admitted that reading the script “moved him inside” after the experience he went through, but he accepted it because he wanted to “make a film like that, with good vibes, although it’s not good, how are you doing”.
“I have not wanted to set myself up as an example (of the fight against cancer) because I do not know everything about this subject but, from my perspective, I have been able to contribute little things to Ibón, to some sequences to try to find a similarity with what I experienced I”.
The shooting, a production by Arcadia Motion Pictures, Aixerrota Films and Pachacamac Films in co-production with Noodles Production (France) and with the support of the ICAA and the Basque Government, and the participation of ETB and TVC, will take place over 7 weeks in various locations in Bizkaia, mostly in the town of Orduña. EFE