TORONTO, ON – SEPTEMBER 10: Director J.A. Bayona attends the TIFF/InStyle/HFPA Party during the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival at Windsor Arms Hotel on September 10, 2016 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
  • Festivals

TIFF Talk: Juan Antonio Bayona

Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona busts on the international scene with The Orphanage, which earned him a Goya for Best New Director in 2007. In 2012 he followed that up with The Impossible starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts on the Indian Ocean Tsunami. In Toronto he premiered A Monster Calls starring Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Toby Kebbell, Lewis MacDougall, and Liam Neeson. “I think, before being a filmmaker, I was a film lover. So when you have a chance to work with people like Liam Neeson and Sigourney Weaver, I mean, with such brilliant careers, it was a privilege. (…) But the truth is, when you start to work on a movie, there is nothing more important than the movie. (…) I remember getting back home, exhausted at the end of every day, and started to think, okay, so I was working with Sigourney Weaver today, and she was the actress in Alien. But you are not aware of that when you are working with them, because first of all, it’s the story, first of all it’s the character and somehow you do this dissociation between the actor you are working with and the story and the legacy and the star.