Laura Torrijos-Bescós (Huesca, 2000) still has an open wound from the bullying she suffered since she was little. School was hell, just like high school. Things didn’t go well at university either. Since she was little, Laura was for her classmates the strange one, the smart one, the one who got good grades and they got along well with the teachers. A girl, Eve, It made his life impossible. Like all stalkers, Eva did not act alone but was surrounded by an unhealthy clique.
At 23 years old and now an actress and director, Torrijos-Bescós wanted to launch a shout against bullying in the form of a short film with which he aspires to win the Goya and Forqué awards, the most important awards in Spanish cinema. Written and directed by the Aragonese filmmaker, ‘And Eve too’ is an animated short in which Carlos López Yrigara uses simple, incomplete strokes and cold tones, an aesthetic option chosen to reinforce feelings of pain due to the traumatic experience experienced.
“They isolated me”
Torrijo-Bescós, who has already made short films about trafficking in women and disabilities, began writing the script six years ago. He did it in the form of a story. “It was a way to let off steam,” recalls the filmmaker, who lives between Huesca and Zaragoza. “I never managed to have a gang either at school or in high school. Every time I made friends with a girl, Eva came and took her away from me. They isolated me, they left me alone. They insulted me and despised me. They also hurt me physically, but the other thing almost hurt me more,” explains the young woman, who was diagnosed with high abilities, something that her classmates could not tolerate.
“They isolated me, they left me alone. They insulted me and despised me. They also hurt me physically, but it almost hurt me psychologically more.”
Laura Torrijos-Bescós, actress and director
Fed up with the situation, their parents made an appointment with the school administration, who limited themselves to meeting them with the parents of the bullies. No one lifted a finger to help her.. Her parents suggested a change of school (a public school) but she, overwhelmed with the situation, did not want to. “I refused because I knew the same thing was going to happen to me and with new people,” she remembers. She didn’t dare go to the police either. He knew that no one would pay attention to him.. “Now there is more talk about bullying, but not before,” he complains.
“I needed professional help”
An only child, the filmmaker and actress survived thanks to art, cinema and reading. Lacking friends, she took refuge in books and movies. She has emerged, but her wound remains open. “Bullying always accompanies you, even if you become an adult and no longer suffer from it,” she emphasizes after acknowledging that she has had to ask for professional help to move forward psychologically. “I did therapy with private psychologists, but now I can’t afford it financially. I have made an appointment at public health, but I don’t know when they will give it to me. “I imagine that in a long time,” she laments.
Huesca is a small city and the filmmaker runs into her attacker, Eva, from time to time. “We don’t greet each other. But she looks at me haughtily and I still feel afraid”, he acknowledges.
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Torrijos-Bescós aspires to stir consciences from the hand of ‘Y Eva also’, which is currently in full festival circuit. It has also been made available to associations of affected people and schools to be able to show the short. “We have to talk more about ‘bullying’”he insists.
The Aragonese director affirms that ‘bullying’ is an explosive cocktail in which everyone has a part. blame: the society that tolerates and accepts violence, the school administrations that cover up the cases and the parents of the aggressors who think that their children are innocent. And also the boys and girls who martyr their peers. “There are bad children who cause harm”he concludes.