The protagonists of Gordos with director Daniel Sanchez Arevalo.

"Would you be prepared to get as big as a cow to make a film?” Daniel Sanchez Arevalo asked his usual collaborator, Antonio de la Torre. Lacking neither guts nor energy, Antonio went off to New York, and gained 15 kilos in 40 days. This is just the beginning of his new diet, however; to play Enrique he will have to put on 18 more to reach a weight of 105 kilos.

Now, after 3 years’ preparation, over 10 months’ filming and rounds of applause at the Venice Film Festival, Gordos is finally on our cinema screens. It is a musical with five stories about obesity, which are interlinked by the protagonists’ attendance at a therapy group. However, the protagonists don’t come to these sessions to slim, but to discover the reasons why they are overweight, and find out why they aren’t happy with their bodies. In the end weight and physique are the least important things. What really matters is facing their fears and obsessions, their needs, dreams, skeletons in the cupboard, families, partners, loves, sex, mistakes, guilt...

As usual, in both life and cinema, the first thing to be noticed is physical appearance. Not only did Antonio de la Torre have to turn into a Spanish De Niro; actresses Maria Morales (El sindrome de Ulises ) and Veronica Sanchez (Los Serrano ) had to go on high-calorie diets supervised by specialists, to pack on an extra 10 kilos. Debutante and former driving instructor Leticia Herrero, on the other hand, was obliged to slim; she is grateful for this and says that given her inexperience, the most challenging aspects were undressing in front of the cameras and, above all, crying. The cast features other big names from television and cinema, such as Roberto Enriquez (La señora ), Raul Arevalo (The Blind Sunflowers ), Pilar Castro (Cuestion de sexo ), Fernando Albizu (Doctor Mateo ), Tete Delgado (Mira quien baila ), Adam Jezierski (Fisica o Quimica ), and another newcomer, straight out of high school, Marta Martin.

However, despite the marketing based on the title or the transformation of the actors, Gordos is not just a film about physically fat people, but about “emotionally big” people, to quote Sanchez Arevalo himself. “The obesity in the film is a metaphor for what we have to put up with every day and can’t complain about. We get more and more fed up and life gets progressively heavier until we explode”. This bursting point was the starting point for the director as, for him, film is conflict.

In fact, although the general tone of the film is comic, Gordos tells the story of some characters who hide behind their appearances and end up fooling themselves. “The comedy which interests me most has a solid dramatic core. It should excite the spectator in all senses...” observed the director, whose aim is to fuse both genres completely. The producer of the film, Jose Antonio Felez, defines Sanchez Arevalo as a “pessimistic optimist”. “Dani loves all his characters; he can see their faults but he saves them all.”

Gordos is being released in cinemas on Friday 11 September.