Argentinean director Pedro Speroni first encountered Iván Bilbaos, the rugged, charismatic subject of his new film, during the making of his previous documentary Rancho (2021), set inside a maximum security prison. Iván was one of the inmates, a boxer doing time but dreaming of sporting glory once he was released.
During the shooting of Rancho, Speroni had been present in the prison when Iván got into a fight with another inmate. Iván had spotted the filmmaker and made sure that he wasn’t caught up in the violence. That was when Speroni realised that behind his macho facade, the boxer was a kind and generous man.
The Bilbaos (a premiere in the International Feature Competition at Visions du Réel) starts just as Iván gets his freedom. The burly brawler is one of the most popular men in the prison. The other inmates queue up to say affectionate goodbyes to him. After five years behind bars, it is time for him to return to his home town Chascomùs, a couple of hours outside Buenos Aires.
“I went to his house one day. He was there. We have a very nice bond,” the director remembers his reunion with Iván a year after their last meeting. They ended up going to a party together. Speroni slept in his house and met his family.
After he left prison, Iván set up in business as a money lender. His wife Yamila helped him keep the books. When clients were late repaying, Iván would sometimes threaten them. He couldn’t let them take advantage of him. At the same time, his sympathy for the borrowers is also apparent.
“If a bank lends you money, it’s worse because they take your house, they take all [you have] if you don’t pay,” Speroni explains why people in the community come to Iván for money. They would struggle to get loans from a bank.
“I don’t think he is so aggressive,” the director adds of how the boxer treats his customers. “He needs them to respect him. If they don’t respect Iván they won’t pay and so maybe he has to be that way.”
Speroni had originally intended to make the film entirely about Iván but the longer he spent in the household, the closer he became to Yamila and to Iván’s adopted daughter Luz. They also feature prominently – which is why the documentary is called The Bilbaos, referring to all of them). The director believes that putting a focus on the other members of the family gave the documentary a depth and emotional complexity it would have lacked if it had concentrated only on Iván.
“I had a very strong bond with them. Before I shot the film, I lived with them for a lot of time so they had trust in me and I had trust in them,” Speroni says. In the end, they became so comfortable with the filmmaker’s presence that it was as if he was “invisible.” They would go about their daily lives without paying any attention to the camera (which Speroni himself was operating, working with a sound assistant).
Speroni was with the family for over six months, often filming them in intimate situations. Yamila was pregnant and the camera crew was there when she gave birth.
As the documentary reveals, Iván had a tough childhood. He was badly bullied by bigger, older boys. His father left him to fend for himself. As he grew in size, he took revenge against those who had tormented him.
When Speroni first met Iván in prison, he had no idea about what the boxer endured as a kid. “In prison, he had to be strong,” the filmmaker says of the image Iván projected. It was a tough world in which no-one dared to show emotional vulnerability. However, with his family, the boxer is more forthcoming about the traumas he endured as a kid.
Ironically, Iván was a better boxer when he was in prison than after he regained his freedom.
“Before he was in jail, he was an amateur champion in Buenos Aires. In jail, he was training all the time,” Speroni observes. The man we see leaving prison at the start of the documentary is lean and fit but, on the outside, Iván put on weight. With his family and business to worry about, he couldn’t devote so much time to training. He is now more of a coach than a fighter.
Iván has a difficult life. The money lending isn’t making him rich. He lives in a tough part of town in modest circumstances. Nonetheless, Speroni believes his documentary is more optimistic than despairing.
“I think it is a film about a guy who is trying to get ahead,” the director says. “Like a boxer, he is always fighting to have a better life.”
Yamila saw the film “three or four weeks ago” and loved it. Iván was invited to a screening in Buenos Aires but was too busy to attend. However, he stays in touch with Speroni, calling him up regularly and they remain firm friends.
Speroni produced The Bilbaos as well as directed it. The project secured support from government body, INCAA. As the documentary begins its festival journey, Speroni hopes soon to secure a sales agent and to emulate the success of Rancho, which screened all over the world.
Now, the director is preparing a new project in a similar mould to his earlier doc. The new film Sisters, is again be a documentary set in a maximum security prison but, this time, the inmates are women. Speroni has already been visiting the jail for “the last year and a half” and has built up a good relationship both with the authorities and the women themselves.
“The people that work in the prison trust a lot in me and I can be there a lot of hours per day,” Speroni says. While making Rancho, he spent up to 12 hours a day with the inmates. On the new project, he is hoping for similar access – and to provide an equally sympathetic and detailed portrait of their lives.
