Mariel Alende O'Connell
Interviews, storytelling and co-direction

She was born in a family in which her four grandparents had four different mother tongues: O’Connell spoke English; Alende spoke Spanish; Jonquières spoke French and Vicario spoke Italian. Subsequently, her passion for languages came quite naturally. As soon as she arrived in Catalonia, she started studying Catalan. From then on, she would use Catalan as her everyday language and the door to discovering Catalan culture. 

As a singer herself, she soon got in touch with local musicians and poets who ended up waking in her a love for Catalan poetry and literature. She began working with them in various recordings and poetry recitals. In the end, Mariel was to sing a poem written by Eduard Miró -composed and played by Salvador Pané- which won a prize in the Catalan poetry contest in Perpignan called the Jocs Florals. She was therefore invited to sing in the prize-giving ceremony. It was then that the idea of making a film was conceived. 

Her previous experience behind and in front of a camera is the short film Subliminally Explicit, directed by Maj Vernell, who would subsequently become involved in the Perpignan project.