Vampires and HIV Collide in ‘Silence,’ the Spanish Miniseries Traveling From Locarno to Austin
The vampires are coming! Silence (Silencio), a miniseries directed by Spanish filmmaker Eduardo Casanova (Skins) that combines the vampire mythos with the AIDS epidemic, will be part of the official selection at genre festival Fantastic Fest in Austin, which runs Sept. 18-25, following its international premiere at the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival.
In 2023, the screenwriter and director won the best film award at the festival for La Piedad.
Silence, a blend of thriller and psychological drama with a striking visual style, is the first series created by Casanova. It unfolds in two timelines: the Europe devastated by the Black Plague and 1980s Spain amid the AIDS crisis.
“Silence tells the story of a family of vampire sisters struggling to survive the scarcity of ‘clean human blood,’ while also confronting social silence and stigma around illness, sexuality, and identity,” according to a synopsis. “But the true poison that haunts them is not the disease, it is the social silence that surrounds them. Centuries later, one of their descendants faces a similar scenario: the AIDS pandemic in Spain. There, she discovers that although time has passed, social condemnation remains just as piercing. And the love between the ‘sick’ and the ‘healthy,’ between vampires and humans, still provokes the same fear.”
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The cast of the series includes Leticia Dolera, María Leon, Ana Polvorosa, Omar Ayuso, Lucía Díez and Ana Polvorosa.
“I’ve always been struck by the way people referred to the first AIDS patients back when the
disease was still deadly: The Pink Plague,” Casanova explains in a director’s statement. “Silence uses the myth of vampires as a metaphor to reflect on social stigma and condemnation through two pandemics, the Black Death and AIDS. Though they’re separated by centuries and shaped by very different social contexts, both are bound by a shared thread: fear and rejection.”
He concludes: “Silence itself can be deadly. At the same time, I’m blending two genres that fascinate me, and that I feel have never been explicitly merged in this way: vampire horror and queer cinema. Both deal with viruses transmitted through fluids like blood, a central element both in vampirism and in HIV discourse.”
Check out a clip from the three-episode series below.
