You were the only non-German-speaking actor with a leading role, what do you remember most about shooting in Austria?
Grégoire Colin: My strongest memory is my arrival in Vienna, in this impressive city, where I had never been before. The feeling of being foreign, by contrast, wasn’t as strong, since in the past I have often worked with non-French directors. A few years ago, for example, with Naomi Kawase and a team that spoke primarily Japanese. Despite that, things were still different with SPAIN because here I had taken on a challenge I had never dealt with before: working in a language I didn’t know and for which I felt no particular affinity. And on top of that, in an accent that wasn’t mine – I was to speak German with a Moldavian accent. It was a little like a journey into the unknown, but of course it was a very interesting job – I had a coach and someone had recorded my lines on tape for me. At any rate, I have never worked so hard learning lines for a movie.

What made you curious about the role? Was it the character of Sava or also the director’s film language, which you had discovered in her most recent movie It Happened Just Before?
Grégoire Colin: The documentary conveyed a strict sense of framing and staging. To me Anja’s film language has something quite special, very radical and at the same time extremely exotic about it. I found all this appealing, but above all, the story moved me. I thought the screenplay was very intelligent with the main character being a woman whose story is told through the voices of the people she encounters in her day-to-day life. When I read the screenplay, I was in the middle of co-writing another screenplay in which the female character had similar traits. That captured my attention all the more. And I had never really been offered a role in a multi-perspective film like this before. All these things piqued my curiosity.

It’s interesting that SPAIN turned into a linguistic adventure for you when you were casted as the director’s first choice but above all as an actor with a strong physical presence.
Grégoire Colin: Yes, that’s true. For an actor it is naturally always an advantage to be the first choice. Anja really wanted me to be in her film, it’s hard to be blasé about that. For me the language challenge was my main priority. As to the other aspects of the role, there was a subtle almost erotic element involved. It has to do with lines, bodies, and movements that you are either aware of or not. And when you point the camera at someone, you have to want to film that person. It is a kind of loving gesture. Sometimes you get to know someone through his or her films and then the real encounter is disappointing. I hope it wasn’t too disappointing with me. In my work I usually take my point of departure from movement: I envision how I might be in the given situation. It has to do with the interaction between a way of looking at things of speaking and moving so that the viewer can believe in the character. This subtle alchemy is absolutely necessary when trying to embody a character. If it works, all is fine. I always try not to resort to the same old mechanisms. It is extremely tempting if something worked well before and you suddenly find yourself confronted with a similar situation. When an actor experiences certain emotions, repetition is a natural response. To me it’s more interesting to constantly invent something new, to virtually put myself into a different body every time.

The smugglers double-cross Sava and he ends up in Austria instead of Spain. He has nothing but the shirt on his back and doesn’t speak the language, and yet he never conveys the sense of being a victim. Was this a quality you liked about this character?
Grégoire Colin: I had the impression that the story was so congruous because it was semi-autobiographical. Dimitré Dinev has experienced this and knows what he is talking about. That doesn’t mean it is an autobiographical story, but Dimitré was able to make up the character of Sava by drawing on his own experiences. If everything is correct and laid out like a well-coordinated suit, the actor’s task is easy – he just slips into it and wears it.