HMU Exclusive Interview: Javier Gutiérrez on Before the Fall 4K Restoration | Fantastic Fest 2025
- Travis Brown
- Sep 30
- 3 min read
One thing Fantastic Fest always delivers: reunions with filmmakers who still have gasoline in the tank. I caught up with my guy Javier Gutiérrez—yes, the mind behind The Wait—to talk about his resurrected 2008 apocalypse-slasher-crime-morality mashup Before the Fall (a.k.a. Tres días), newly restored in 4K and looking crispy.
This isn’t just a polish. It’s a reclamation.
Why now?
“The catalyst was The Wait,” Gutiérrez tells me. “People connected with that world, and Before the Fall is the beginning of that universe I started a long time ago.” Distribution back then was scattered; copies were hard to find. Enter the team at Chroma—they knew the film, loved it, and pushed for a proper restoration. “I wanted audiences to see where it all started—same actor family, same tonal DNA—only now with the visual justice it always needed.”
“It was painful to watch the old HD versions,” he admits. “This summer we went shot-by-shot—multiple labs in Spain—to bring back the color, texture, and intent.”
The story still hits different
If you’ve never seen it: an extinction-level event is inbound. Society does what society does—denies, panics, prays, fights, smokes, sins. In the middle of that chaos, a lifelong nobody, Alejandro, gets three days to decide who he really is. “The movie is about choices,” Javier says. “Redemption in a countdown. The mother protects the children at all costs; the kids reveal who we are when the world stops pretending.”
The family dynamic is the engine here—his words, my applause. The mother might be one of the great unsung matriarchs of apocalyptic cinema: calling out hypocrisy, guarding innocence, handing out reality checks like parking tickets. The kids? Not props—personalities. There’s a sweetness to them that keeps puncturing the darkness. “I was very careful with the little boy’s point of view,” he says. “His innocence breaks through our main character’s armor.”
Built from memory, framed like a painting
You’ll swear the film was shot in a real village. It wasn’t. “I went to almost every village in the south and couldn’t find the Spain that exists in my memory,” Javier laughs. Solution: construct it. Corners, walls, courtyards—stitched into a visual collage. “I’m obsessed with framing and color. My family’s artists; I grew up in museums. Before the Fall pulls palette from Cézanne the way The Wait leaned Caravaggio. Even a glass on a table gets time and intention.”
That painter’s eye is what makes Javier’s stuff instantly recognizable: dread wrapped in beauty, isolation with a heartbeat.
The 4K difference
This restoration isn’t a dust-off; it’s a rescue. “IFC’s old Blu-ray had a color cast that was never ours,” he says. “We couldn’t access the negative, so we did the complicated route—multiple labs, layered correction—until it felt like the film I shot.” If you’ve only seen the faded transfers, this is a new experience—on the big screen or at home when the disc drops.
Why it matters
right now
We talked about fear. About how people behave when the clock runs out. He doesn’t sermonize; he observes. “End times expose who we are—some rage, some deny, some protect. The movie speaks to that… not just in Spain or the U.S., but everywhere.”
And because you’re all going to ask: yes, Javier is cooking. There are U.S. projects brewing, and a third film to sit beside Before the Fall and The Wait is on his mind. “Same universe, different angle,” he teases.
Final word
Before the Fall in 4K isn’t nostalgia—it’s context. It’s the first chapter of a filmmaker’s worldview finally presented with the clarity it always deserved. If you’ve seen it, this is the definitive version. If you haven’t, prepare for a propulsive, genre-bending gut punch that makes room for grace.
Rating: This isn’t a review piece, but you know the vibes—this restoration is essential viewing.
Catch it at Fantastic Fest. Then go rewatch The Wait and get ready for what’s next.
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