From hotel to film set
In March 2021, Antonina Obrador contacted us to discuss her new project, Arca, a short film that she wanted to shoot at Inturotel Cala Esmeralda. It was a lovely surprise for us and, although we were going through a difficult period with the pandemic having a serious effect on the tourism industry, we soon became very excited about the project and began working with the director and the production company, La Periférica, to make a start on the preparations.
Filming began that spring and the main locations in the hotel were the indoor pool, the BLAU restaurant, the corridors in the main building, the massage cabins in the Salinas Spa and the junior suites. All of these, with the director’s imagination and her props team, became futuristic spaces in the Arca spaceship: the communal dining room, the main character’s cabin, the ship’s corridors, the gynaecologist’s room… Here is a link to the trailer so you can see our hotel transformed into a spaceship.
ARCA trailer
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VQsSOdfZhE_0kYDpH_d3uY19RvKIkcea/view?usp=drive_link
Film synopsis
In a dystopian future in which the Earth has become an uninhabitable place, the spaceship Arca is the only place in the universe where human life remains. A young woman, Valentina, is trapped on the ship, which is part of a desperate mission to find a new home for humanity.
Brought up on board Arca since she was a baby, Valentina is destined to be inseminated when she turns twenty, as part of the efforts to keep the human race going. Although her parents sacrificed their lives to save hers, Valentina can’t help but question her destiny. She isn’t happy on Arca and has doubts about whether she wants to become a mother in such conditions.
Obsessed with an old video, recorded by her mother and her only memory of her mother, Valentina is desperately seeking answers and a way to escape her destiny.
Note from the director Antonina Obrador
Arca is a humanist film, a love letter to planet Earth and to freedom. The idea for the script came about in the winter of 2019 when I was pregnant. While thinking about how it would change my life and what future awaited my child, I started to imagine a dystopian world, in the not-so-distant future, when the Earth would become an inhospitable place for human beings.
In 2020, with the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, this vision seemed even closer. Humanity was forced to confront a reality that went beyond any kind of fiction. This crude reality reinforced the importance of the project, which is not just a cinematographic fantasy, but also a sharp reflection on obsolete ways of life and the need for profound change.
Arca not only invites us to value our planet and appreciate our freedom, but also asks us to consider the commercialisation of maternity and the treatment of women’s bodies as a marketable entity. That is why I think this project is a love letter to the Earth and to humanity in the primordial and authentic sense. I honestly believe that we will never be able to be happy outside this planet, as we form part of it and our essence is linked to this habitat.
Arca also acts as a large corporation, it controls its workers, offering them a “comfortable” but managed environment. We are your family, we are your life, and you owe us your body and your time.
I’ll end with a fragment of the book Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a letter written to a female friend who asked for advice on how to raise her daughter as a feminist and which has inspired me a lot: "That [your daughter] will be full of opinions, and that her opinions will come from an informed, humane and broad-minded place. May she be healthy and happy. May her life be whatever she wants it to be."
Filming and location notes
The choice of Inturotel Cala Esmeralda as the main location was key to capturing the essence of a futuristic spaceship. With its modern, avant-garde interior design, the hotel provided the perfect setting to recreate the universe of Arca. The hotel’s clean lines and ample spaces helped create a realistic atmosphere that transports the viewer to this fictional world.
I have to say that, personally, I think the interior design of Inturotel Cala Esmeralda is a genuine work of art. The interior designer, Isabel López Vilalta, has managed to create spaces of astonishing depth with a soft and very cinematographic ambient lighting, which creates a welcoming and very inspiring atmosphere. The use of layers on the walls and contrasting textures makes it very visually rich. It also has a harmonious chromatic palette that is in synch with its surroundings, which isn’t easy to find in real locations.
Something that attracted my attention in particular was the use of repeated shapes such as circles, which can be seen on the walls of the dining room, the corridors, the spa… These forms became the logo of the Arca spaceship and we ended up embroidering them on the crew’s uniforms. To us they evoked the Earth, the maternal uterus or an actual egg, elements that are especially significant within the plot of the film.
Filming at Inturotel Cala Esmeralda meant our team was able to make use, very comfortably, of the facilities to create spaces with great visual beauty. The hotel was not just a film set, it was a huge source of inspiration for all the members of the team.
The swimming pool filming anecdote
During the filming of Arca, starring Valèria Sorolla, there was a funny incident in the hotel pool that we all remember with a smile. The scene in question required Valèria to be floating in the pool, simulating a situation of zero gravity.
However, a big problem arose because due to the COVID-19 restrictions, the hotel was closed and the pool hadn’t been heated. We hadn’t said that we intended to submerge the main character so, despite the paradisical setting, the water was freezing.
Valèria, ever the professional, got ready to enter the ice-cold water. The film team, aware of the situation, tried to help as best they could, providing warm towels and robes between each take. However, each time that Valèria came out of the water, she had goosebumps and her lips were turning increasingly blue.
To give the water more movement, we incorporated a bubble effect, which meant that she could not stay floating on the spot in the same place. Every time we filmed, she moved out of the frame. In the end, Bernat, the film’s prop master, had to get in the pool to hold on to Valèria’s feet. He didn’t have a swimming costume, so he did it in his underwear.
Valèria, seeing the young man with his long beard and tangled hair holding her feet, couldn’t concentrate and started laughing. Her laughter spread to the whole team and we ended up shooting many takes of this scene.
Finally, despite the cold and the laughter, we managed to film the scene successfully, but we all remember the experience as one of the funniest moments from the Arca shoot. The comedy was transferred to the editing table, when Neus Ollé’s camera panned to one side and once again we saw Bernat holding Valèria by the feet.
About the director
Antonina Obrador (Felanitx, 1986) received her degree in Documentary Cinema from the Cinema and Audiovisual School of Catalonia in 2009. After graduating, she has mainly been involved in making and writing scripts for adverts, videoclips and short films, both fiction and documentaries. Of note are A Man who Sails with the Stars which won a Bronze Laus and Happy to be Censored which won two “Merits” at the One Show Festival NY in 2023.
She has worked in television, making the tenth season of the cultural programme Entusiastas (2021) for IB3 and the fictional series Llim (2023) for IB3, À punt and TV3.
She has recently made her debut as a feature film script writer and director with Quest, which has the support of the ICEC (Catalan Institute for Cultural Companies), ICIB (Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts of the Balearic Islands), TV3 and IB3. The film, which is produced by Nanouk Films and La Periférica, had its premiere at the opening night of the Atlántida Film Fest 2023 and has continued its journey through festivals such as the Cambridge Film Festival and the Som cinema Lleida, where it received the prize for best feature film. The script of Quest was selected to participate in the Talents Lab of the Atlántida Film Fest in 2021 and in the script workshop with Miguel Machalski organised by APAIB. In 2024 she premiered the short film Arca at the Atlántida Film Fest 2024. This year in 2024 she has been awarded a grant for creating audiovisual scripts from IEB (Institute of Balearic Studies) to write what will be her second feature film, La bella Ventura.
We would like to invite you to watch the trailer of the film and spot your favourite corners of the hotel. We would be delighted to hear your thoughts via our Instagram account: @inturotel. You are certainly going to see the hotel in a more cinematographic way on your next visit!
Arca has been produced by La Periférica, IB3, ICIB and the Island Council of Mallorca, with the collaboration of Inturotel and it has been distributed by Selected Films. It stars Valèria Sorolla and was written and directed by Antonina Obrador.
