As I’m the middle of five siblings, I spent my weekends at the movies

05/06/2025

The Catalan filmmaker remembers being a fighter child, with untreated dyslexia and that – although fond of the cinema – she wanted to be a truck driver or a ship captain to be able to travel.

Maria Ripoll (Barcelona, 1965) is a catalan film director. In 1998 she debuted  the film  «Rain on the Shoes2. Now she released her latest film «This will also pass»  ( original title: «tambien esto pasará») , based on the novel of the same name by Milena Busquets.

«I lived on Sant Elies Street, near Plaza Molina. First, I went to the Talitha School, which is now the Orlandai School, and then to the Acis Artur Martorell School and the Institut Montserrat.»

How did you experience the changes?
«At 10, I went from one extreme to the other—from a progressive Catalanist school, which is Orlandai, to another school with a similar system but in a different neighborhood, around Plaza Sanllehy, where I grew up. Kids came from the Carmel barracks, and I emerged as a bit of a fighter.»

Were you a good student?
«I wasn’t a classroom kid. I didn’t do very well at school; I had untreated dyslexia because it wasn’t visible back then. But I had a good time and stood up for my friends a lot. I have an image etched in my head of a friend of mine who had both arms broken, and I would hit the boy who wanted to hurt her. I was a playground kid, a street kid.»

Did you go to the movies often?
«Yes, since I was little. We lived across the hall from a cinema in the parish of Santa Agnès. And since I’m the middle of five siblings—not quite one of the oldest, not one of the youngest—I spent my weekends at the cinema. I’d take the booster seat, sit down, and watch the double feature.»

She has two older sisters and two younger brothers.
«The five of us would put on really funny plays. We charged a peseta to get in. We acted on the street, in Arenys, where we spent our summers. We’d perform the same scene in different ways—faster, laughing, crying…»

What did you want to be when you grew up?
«As a child, whenever they asked me, I’d say I really liked traveling—and that I wanted to be a ship’s captain. I wanted to see the world, and I loved the sea.»

Did you try to pursue that?
«I did. I went to the maritime school in Plaça Palau to sign up, but they told me there were no female captains. I told them I knew of one in Galicia. But they tricked me—they said the entrance exam was on September 2nd, and it was actually on the 1st. When I showed up, it was already over.»

When did you realize you wanted to be a filmmaker?
«At 14, I had a revelation. One day I said: If I love images so much—framing, light, stories—then I have to make films.«

How did your family react?
«My father laughed. Of course, there was no one in the family in this field. He was a chemist and my mother a housewife. Though she was very imaginative and active—her car was always full of kids. We’d go on treasure hunts, into the woods… When someone passed by on the street, she’d make up a story, create characters.»

Despite that, you didn’t give up.
«No. I remember having two books on my bedside table: one was the interviews Truffaut did with Hitchcock, and the other was Luis Buñuel’s memoirs. By reading and asking questions, I discovered what this profession was, and I started taking all kinds of courses. I went to university to study communications, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to make films.»

As a child, did you have any role models who were female film directors?