Clara Roquet Masterclass

Creating Characters. From Writing to Directing

How do you create a character? Which ideas shape a character’s behaviour all the way from sketching out a screenplay through to holding rehearsals with actors and finalising set design? How do you build up a character, with all their hopes, urges and fatal flaws, without forgetting the inherent contradictions and complexities at the heart of any human being?

As Visconti said, filmmaking is a craft in which the design of work processes is key to the final result. In this masterclass, Clara Roquet analyses the work processes that have helped her create characters from scratch, fresh off the page, and then build them up until all their imagined traits and features have to be embodied by a real-life actor, with their own skills and characteristics.

The rehearsal space is where this translation, this magical personification, comes to pass and where scenes takes shape. For each and every step, I have discovered tools to help me accompany my characters as they move closer to appearing on screen.

Clara Roquet is a screenwriter and director with a master's degree in screenwriting from Columbia University. After writing 10.000 km (2014) with director Carlos Marqués-Marcet, she wrote the screenplay for Jaime Rosales's Petra (2018), which premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes; Carlos Marqués-Marcet's Els dies que vindran (2019), which won Best Film at the Málaga Film Festival; Mounia Akl's debut, Costa Brava, Lebanon (2022), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival; and Elena Martín’s Creatura (2023), which won the Europa Cinemas Label Prize for Best European Film at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Her directorial debut, Libertad (2021), premiered at Critics' Week at Cannes in 2021 and was nominated for six Goya and four Gaudí Awards. Her short film El adios (2016), produced by Lastor Media, won a Gaudí Award and the Espiga de Oro at Seminci and was nominated for a European Film Award. She also teaches screenwriting and directing at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.