Origin
The young filmmaker Alba González de Molina (1989, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) directed her first feature film with Blanca Ordoñez (1989, Madrid) in 2012. The documentary was titled Stop! Rodando el Cambio (“Stop! Shooting the Change”).
It was a self-funded, non-profit documentary that warns us about the need to seek alternative lifestyles to the current model, where the planets natural resources are being pushed to an unsustainable level.
Two years after its release, the film has had more than 120,000 views on YouTube. It continues to travel the world via festivals following alternative and highly viewed networks, and has exhibited in places such as: The Washington DC Environmental Film Festival, the Environmental International Film Festival in Barcelona, the International Gender Perspective Film Festival in Mexico, the International Environmental Film Festival in the Dominican Republic, and the Another Way Film Festival in the Cineteca Matadero in Madrid.
During the filming of the documentary, the team travelled to a community in northern Spain, which was founded twenty five years ago, when a group of people from different countries decided to restore the ruins of an abandoned village.
Today its inhabitants live in a social structure based on consensus. They have lived with the same people for a quarter century and also receive new adventurers who are ready to escape from the system and try to build a different one.
It is in this environment that the story of Julie develops. Alba wrote the script about a French girl called Julie, who hastily decides to leave her home and life in Madrid and finds refuge in a hidden village where she begins to work as a teacher. There, where life and nature are one, villagers welcome the enigmatic Julie. The twists and turns of destiny cause the two opposing realties to clash, intersect and diverge.
The film Julie aims both to demystify and to humanize the village’s alternative and sustainable way of living and eliminate any ideals of a utopia. It reflects a way of life of a brave group of people with clear ideas, some of whom have lost their way, whilst others have found it.
