Sexist violence among adolescents, the drama that even they do not want to recognize

Sexist violence grows among those under 18 years of age.

According to the latest report on gender and domestic violence from the National Institute of Statistics, adolescence was the age range in which the number of reports increased the most in 2021 compared to 2020, 70.8%.

It is also the group in which the number of victims has grown the most, 28.6%.

The ANAR Foundation (Help for Children and Adolescents at Risk) has attended more than 18,500 cases of gender violence with minor victims since 2009 and warns that in this time the attention has multiplied by 10. In 46.9% of the calls they receive, the adolescents were unaware that they are suffering gender violence.

The pay channel COSMO premieres this Friday the 25th its fifth short film against gender violence,

.

The film can be seen on COSMO at 10:45 p.m. and will be available on demand on COSMO ON and on the channel's website and social networks.

In this case, he has decided to focus precisely on how this problem can affect adolescents.

Four friends who study in a boarding school escape from their rooms to throw their own party in the gymnasium of the center.

However, the secret that one of them keeps and that torments her will eventually come to light.

More information

Those under 18 years of age are the age group in which sexist violence grows the most: more aggressors and more victims

Imanol Ruiz de Lara directs this production, which he has written together with Gonzalo Tejedor Andrés.

The two were responsible for

a short on the rights of trans people also produced by the channel.

While researching to prepare the script for the film that is being released now, its authors were surprised by how, despite the figures, adolescents saw gender violence as a problem for adults that did not affect them as much.

For Ruiz de Lara, it was important that the film did not launch an idea without further ado, but that it told a story with other things.

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It is a story that talks about friendship.

The ending reinforces that idea of ​​how important this group of friends is for the protagonist and to face this traumatic event that she has experienced ”.

The director Imanol Ruiz de Lara, with the actresses of 'Flechas' at a time of filming.

“We liked to place these girls in a boarding school, a space from which they never leave, and offer the viewer a journey through a story that would go through different stages,” says Ruiz de Lara in a telephone conversation.

The actresses who play these friends are Paula Losada, María Romanillos, Naira Lleó and María Morera, while Ariadna Gil collaborates playing the director of the institute.

“It has a more fun part, of rebellion, another of tension, another more playful… We liked going through different emotions and states within the group, creating the feeling of friendship first, building that group and how they have a good time in secret, and then making jealousy bloom over information that one of them doesn't know how to interpret and makes her feel betrayed”.

The arrows in the title also play a fundamental role in the short, with a great symbolic charge.

“They are closely related to Cupid, love, having a crush… But at the same time, they are a weapon that can do damage.

Documenting ourselves, we read that some girls said that they did not interpret what their aggressors were doing as sexist violence, but that they did it because they loved them.

It seemed to us that the symbol of the bow and arrow, Cupid and the reverse of the potentially dangerous weapon were very powerful”, explains the director.

Paula Losada plays Gabrielle in 'Arrows'.

Those responsible for the short considered two options for him: tell the story with four female leads, as they finally did, or do it with four boys.

In this second case, one of the characters would be the aggressor, others would follow him without questioning what had happened, and another would rebel against these attitudes.

"It seems to us that this is less counted, but the

, when we were in this dilemma, he told me that we had to give prominence to women, because if the prominence is taken away from them normally, we couldn't do it also when they are the protagonists.

We understood that point of view, but as authors it seems to us that it was also important that young boys know that in the face of these attitudes they must raise their voices.

Due to production issues we couldn't, but we imagined a diptych with these two stories, in two boarding schools, which could work very well”.

Despite this little thorn, Ruiz de Lara is very satisfied with the result of

.

"If he makes this group of young people reflect on everything, he will have fulfilled his objective."

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