North American Premiere
Barcelona, 2005. Enric Marco (Eduard Fernández) has built his reputation on the claim of being a Holocaust survivor. A charismatic speaker, and chairman of a survivors’ association representing the 9,000 Spanish deportees who were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during WWII, he is slated to speak before the Spanish prime minister at a Holocaust memorial service. But as the date approaches, a historian uncovers inconsistencies in Marco’s life story, leading to greater implications: in truth, Marco was never imprisoned in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, as he so claimed. He fabricated his own backstory.
This riveting biographical thriller by Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño (whose past collaborations include Spain’s Oscar entries The Endless Trench and Flowers) deploys time skips to dramatize the inception and unmasking of Marco’s persona. Propelled by a fantastic original score by Aránzazu Calleja, the film’s crisp, dynamic cinematography evokes, at key moments, the vertigo of a great upheaval. A tense depiction of the personal and national devastation wrought by one man’s falsehoods.
Community Partner
Eduard Fernández, Nathalie Poza
Spain
2024
In Spanish, Catalan and English with English subtitles
Book Tickets
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Credits & Director
Producer
Ander Barinaga-Rementeria, Xabier Berzosa, Jaime Ortiz de Artiñano, Ander Sagardoy
Screenwriter
Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño, Jorge Gil Munarriz, Jose Mari Goenaga
Cinematography
Javier Agirre
Editor
Maialen Sarasua Oliden
Art Director
Mikel Serrano
Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño are directors and screenwriters who have been working together for over 20 years through their production company Moriarti, alongside Jose Mari Goenaga. Moriarti was founded in 2001, and since then they have produced five feature films, three cinematic documentaries, over a dozen short films, several television documentaries, and a series for Disney+.
Filmography: Sahara Marathon (2004); The Giant (2017); The Endless Trench (2019)
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