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
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
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)
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
The History of Concrete
After attending a workshop on pitching saccharine Hallmark movies, John Wilson tries to apply all the same best practices to his documentary about concrete. Frequently absurd and endlessly entertaining detours, asides, and digressions ensue.
La Bola Negra
A big, old-school historical melodrama gets a thrillingly modern, queer makeover from Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who artfully juggle three gay protagonists across stories set in 1932, 1937, and 2017. Winner: Best Director, Cannes. Screening on 35mm.
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
The Mad Dog of Europe
The story of an unmade screenplay from the writer of Citizen Kane. In 1932, Herman Mankiewicz wrote a film that foretold the persecution of the Jews and the war in Europe. But Hollywood wouldn't take the risk and The Mad Dog of Europe was never made.
The Mortal Storm
In this explicitly anti-Nazi melodrama directed by Frank Borzage (Three Comrades) a year before the US entered the war, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart fall in love as their friends and family fall prey to the rise of Hitler's Nazi party in Germany.
Three Comrades
Scripted by F Scott Fitzgerald, Three Comrades (1938) was the first US studio film to chronicle the rise of European fascism in the 30s. Three German veterans open up a repair shop and try to regain a normal life, but political extremists have other ideas.
