In a world that consumes images at the speed of oblivion, a conversation can be an act of resistance. We sat down with Rosalía Omil to discuss ´Jacqueline. La liberté´. What began as an interview about a documentary transformed, without warning, into something rarer and more necessary: a conversation about silence, the ethics of gazing without intervening, and the urgency of spaces where art is not promoted, but nurtured.
HoyLunes — By Ehab Soltan
(A discreet café. Natural light. No visible recorders. Rosalía observes the street for a few seconds before speaking. The pace has shifted. No one is in a hurry.)
HoyLunes
‘Jacqueline. La liberté’ does not ask the viewer for moral permission. As a director, what was your greatest fear when deciding not to intervene or explain Jacqueline’s decision?
Rosalía
My fear was not moral. I wasn’t worried about whether the audience would agree with Jacqueline or not. My fear was being worthy of the trust she placed in me.
(She slowly interlaces her fingers. She does not dramatize.)
When someone allows you into such an intimate and transcendental moment of their life, the real risk is betraying that by trying to turn it into a message or a lesson. Intervening or explaining would have been, in a way, appropriating something that wasn’t mine.
My responsibility was to accompany her. To be present. To respect her.
Not to translate her decision nor justify it to others.
I wanted it to be seen and felt exactly as it is: with all its complexity, its silences, its doubts, its rhythm. To trust that the viewer could navigate her story without my interference.
HoyLunes
During filming, you made a very specific technical decision: small cameras, no lights. How did you manage to make Jacqueline forget the lens?
Rosalía
Both José Val Bal and Lisa Zi Xiang—the producers of ‘Jacqueline. La liberté’—and I were clear from the start that the setup could not be invasive. We shot with a GoPro—later there were two—because we didn’t want Jacqueline to feel observed or surrounded by a crew.
In the beginning, of course, the camera was there. It was noticed.
But it was a six-month shoot.
(A brief pause. The sound of a cup being placed on a nearby table is heard.)
With time, it stopped being “the camera”. It became just another presence.
What we were experiencing mattered much more than the fact that it was being filmed.
HoyLunes
The film is unsettling because it offers neither solace nor pedagogy. Were you ever tempted to explain?
Rosalía
Yes, of course. Explaining is always tempting, especially when you know it’s a subject that generates fear or judgment.
But I realized—and José Val Bal did too, during editing—that explaining was a way of controlling what the viewer should feel.
Silence is not an aesthetic strategy.
It is a form of respect.
Jacqueline didn’t need me to translate her decision. She needed me to be there.
HoyLunes
You’ve said that this experience will stay with you for a lifetime. How has it changed you as an actress?
Rosalía
In a very specific way: now, I listen more.
As an actress, you sometimes arrive with many ideas about the character. This experience taught me the value of not anticipating, of letting the other person modify you.
(She gazes at a fixed point on the table, as if measuring the memory.)
It also helped me soften the drama surrounding death. Living through something like this places you in front of the essential. It reminds you that life is happening right now.
That changes the way you exist on stage. There is less artifice, less anxiety to “perform”, and more availability for things to happen.
For an actress, that changes everything.
HoyLunes
After something so vital, how does your relationship with fiction change?
Rosalía
Fiction doesn’t become smaller. It becomes more demanding.
Now I continue to seek emotional truth even in highly constructed scenes. I am less interested in “doing a scene well” and more in understanding what that character needs in order to exist.
In the series I’ve done, even with supporting characters, the approach has been the same: total commitment.
To me, there are no small characters, only more or less profound gazes upon them.
HoyLunes
After directing, is it harder to let yourself be directed again?
Rosalía
No. They are different processes.
I’ve been working as an actress for years and I am used to putting myself in the hands of a director. I love that exchange.
Directing has been a learning experience that adds, rather than interferes. It has given me more tools and more empathy toward those who direct.
HoyLunes
In a text published on our website, you wrote: “A life is not summarized; it is traversed”. Is that your philosophy as an artist?
Rosalía
Yes. Entirely.
If you don’t go deep into a person, if you don’t traverse them with time and rigor, they remain flat. You never truly get to know them.
Directing ´Jacqueline. La liberté´, I understood this very clearly: to comprehend her decision, data and quick explanations weren’t enough. You had to listen to her body, feel her timing, look at her past, see how she changed and how society changed.
When you synthesize too much, you stay in the idea of things, not the experience.
And to me, both in acting and directing, that is what interests me: the process, that which is not evident.
People are not a headline.
Not in life, nor in cinema.
HoyLunes
You move between large productions and very intimate projects. Where do you feel your true voice lies?
Rosalía
I don’t experience them as separate worlds.
I am an actress. It is my profession. But I also studied filmmaking and assistant directing because the other side of the camera always called to me.
Now we are preparing a second feature-length documentary with the same team, in a small, artisanal format, very closely tied to reality.
(She leans slightly forward.)
What moves me is telling stories that speak about the society we live in. Cinema can point things out, accompany, and transform. It is very powerful to feel that these films stir consciences and that there are people who breathe a sigh of relief upon seeing them, because they understand they are not alone, that there are more of us, and that there is a way out.
My dream is not to choose between acting or directing.
It is to be able to sustain both.
HoyLunes
We live in a time of constant haste. What would you say to your colleagues about the need for spaces that discuss cinema with composure?
Rosalía
That they are essential.
Not to go against anything, but to provide balance. We live surrounded by stimuli and sometimes we lose the ability to stop and let something truly pierce us.
Art needs time, silence, and reflection. Otherwise, films pass through… but they don’t stay.
On the day of the premiere, I only asked one thing of the audience: to leave the haste outside and enter the rhythm of an 86-year-old woman.
Because that rhythm—if we make it there—will also be ours.
(Silence. Not uncomfortable. Necessary.)
HoyLunes
Perhaps that is why we need places where cinema doesn’t come to be promoted, but to be nurtured. Spaces where artists don’t have to justify themselves to be true to themselves.
Rosalía
(A slight smile, almost imperceptible.)
That would be a very necessary refuge.
HoyLunes
That is what we are trying to build.
Not a storefront.
A place where art can stay a little longer…
and where those who create it can recover from the noise.
Outside, the city continues at a frantic pace. Inside, time has changed in density.)
#HoyLunesVoices #JacquelineLaLiberté #ResistanceCinema #RosalíaOmil #EthicalCinema #FilmEthics
