‘The impossible’ and the tsunami that devastated the Spanish box office 10 years ago

He tenth anniversary of ‘The Impossible’ It will be celebrated in style, just as one of the highest-grossing Spanish films in history deserves. JA Bayona has recalled exclusively for FOTOGRAMAS how the phenomenon lived in movie theaters, the “tsunami” of people who went to see her and even the fainting spells caused by the tape.

The 10th anniversary of the film’s premiere will be the perfect excuse for a special anniversary screening of ‘The Impossible’ in Barcelona in which both the director JA Bayona and the survivor of the 2004 Thailand tsunami María Belónwhose story served as the inspiration to carry out the project and the person on whom the character of Naomi Watts is based, the actress who was nominated for an Oscar for ‘The Impossible’.

The filmmaker recalls the madness that was experienced at its premiere in a talk in which he even told us about fainting in the first few passes of the film at festivals:

“We went to the Toronto Festival and a person fainted in the first screening. Then, in the second screening, another person fainted. From there we went to the San Sebastian Festival the following week and during the screening the projection was stopped because it was Another person had fainted. And I remember that later at the Sitges Festival the same thing happened again.”

Both the director and the producer Belen Atienza They began to worry because they were opening very soon “in 300 theaters with 3 or 4 shows a day. What can happen?“

“Yes, it’s true that a lot of comments were heard later from people who had fainted during the film, and I think that in the end made people more curious to see it. Although at first we were afraid”

And boy did it arouse people’s curiosity. ‘The Impossible’ was placed in the top 1 of the highest grossing films in Spanish cinema with more than 42 million euros collected, only surpassed several years later by the phenomenon of ‘Eight Basque surnames’.