Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Javier Bardem present Cannes contender El ser querido in Madrid

Premise and character confrontation

Rodrigo Sorogoyen and co-writer Isabel Peña build El ser querido around the volatile reunion of an estranged father and daughter. Esteban Martinez, played by Javier Bardem, is a celebrated Spanish filmmaker who relocated to the United States, established a new family with two young children, and won two Academy Awards. After thirteen years without contact (one Spanish review states seventeen years), Esteban arranges a meeting at a restaurant with his daughter Emilia, portrayed by Victoria Luengo. Emilia works as a waitress in Spain while trying to land acting roles beyond minor appearances in television series. During an opening dialogue lasting fifteen to twenty minutes, Esteban offers Emilia a leading role in his upcoming film, initiating a tense negotiation over past abandonment, resentment, and sober restraint against drinking.

Themes of guilt and colonial history

The narrative revolves around the filming of Desierto, a fictional production set in 1932 during Spanish colonial rule in Western Sahara and scheduled to shoot in Fuerteventura. Esteban's script examines Spain's departure from Western Sahara, establishing a direct parallel between national abandonment and his personal neglect of his daughter. Speaking at a promotional event in Madrid on 25 August 2026, Luengo reflected on the historical subject matter.

There was a moment when Spain abandoned the Sahara and after having been there, having colonized it, as Emilia says, it left those people there to their fate. And that is not an opinion, it is a fact that happened.

Peña explained that the screenwriters wanted Esteban to embody an intellectual contradiction between public ethics and private responsibility.

It seemed very interesting to us, very complex and real as life itself, that a character like Martinez could have such fair ideas about an international conflict, but then not be able to look at his own guilt.

Production techniques and staging

Sorogoyen moves away from the thriller structure of earlier projects like As bestas and the police drama Antidisturbios to focus on character psychology. To create authentic distance between the leads, Sorogoyen instructed Bardem and Luengo not to meet in person until the first day of filming their opening restaurant confrontation. The sequence uses shot-reverse shot editing and close-ups before shifting to the wider fictional shoot, which features Raúl Arévalo in the supporting cast. The metacinematic story includes a Moroccan actor cast as a Sahrawi character, prompting political debates among the crew during dinners on set.

Every time we try to address a complex topic, we always try to see it, as citizens and filmmakers, from every possible point of view.

Festival competition and thematic comparisons

El ser querido competed in the Official Selection for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival before its presentation to the Spanish press in Madrid. Critics noted structural similarities with Joachim Trier's film Sentimental Value, which also depicts an acclaimed director hiring his estranged daughter for a comeback project. However, Sorogoyen's execution pairs intimate domestic drama with historical inquiry into Spain's colonial past, alternating between color and monochrome sequences during the fictional shoot.