Sarah Jilani

I had to go through a couple of rounds.

And then I remember at a particular part in the process, they called my parents and they asked them to not change my look.

Ivana had learnt her scenes and was ready, but when she arrived, it was a bit of a disaster.

They wanted her to perform something completely different.

I'm an 11-year-old kid, and Guillermo del Toro's in the room.

I remember his wife was in the room.

There were a bunch of people, and they looked at the ones I had, and they're like, oh, no, it's these ones that we want you to read for.

So do you think you can memorize them in, like, 10 minutes in the other room?

And I was like, yeah, of course, no problem at all.

So I memorized an extra 12 pages and then I went into the room and I delivered the scenes.

It was very emotional.

I think everyone connected in that moment.

I had to do a lot of preparing for this role because I had to understand the depth of it and the suffering behind the civil war in Spain and what a child in war must have felt like.

So we had a lot of rehearsals and so I was exposed to all of it.

There was nothing that was hidden from me or that they tiptoed around me in that regard.

The film is set at a remote house in woodland and it was mostly filmed on location in the mountains outside Madrid.

I really discovered my passion for acting and for being on a set.

It was a massive learning curve, that's for sure, because I had to learn how to conduct myself on a set.

And I was surrounded by these amazing actors, which in and of itself was quite intimidating for such a young girl.

You wanted to step up your game so that the other actors could do their job and could shine.