The personal identity and the reconstruction of memories and the past are the theme of Carla Subirana’s intimate film Nadar. In her first full-length film, the director reflects on the loss of family and collective memory. The film maker succeeds in giving her personal quest a moving universal meaning. Subirana grew up in a world of women. Her anti-Franco grandfather was executed in 1940 after the Spanish Civil War for committing three armed raids. When Subirana embarks on her quest for truth in this issue that has always been surrounded by silence, her grandmother already has Alzheimer’s disease and her mother is suffering from the same ailment. In her film, Subirana compares the creative process, that lasts for years, with swimming underwater in danger of drowning.
