Ikiru Films’ ‘Segundo premio’, ‘Marco’ and ‘La estrella azul’ are the films shortlisted to represent Spain at the Oscar Awards
Source: www.elperiodico.com
Two musical biopics and a film based on the Enric Marco impostor scandal in the race to Hollywood
The Spanish Film Academy has chosen a curious trio in its pre-selection process for the next Oscars. The three shortlisted films: ‘Marco’, ‘La estrella azul’ and ‘Segundo premio’ by Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez: a more social film about Enric Marco Batlle, the man who pretended to have been in the Mauthausen extermination camp, and two films that, in different ways, explore musical creation and the experiences linked to this exploration. Coincidentally, or not, they are three pseudo ‘biopics’, films about real male characters made by directors.
Marco’ is the latest film by the Donostia-based collective Moriarty (Aitor Areregi, Jon Garaño and José Mari Goenaga), responsible for ‘Loreak’, ‘Handia’, ‘La trinchera infinita’ and the ‘Cristóbal Balenciaga‘ series, among other titles. Eduard Fernández plays Enric Marco in a new cinematographic approach to this character who cemented his prestige among Holocaust survivors through deception. In 2009, Santi Fillol and Lucas Bernal made the documentary ‘Ich bin Enric Marco‘, in which he expressed himself without too much concealment.
Without questioning his attitude, letting the events and the character speak for themselves, the proposal of ‘Marco’ is the reconstruction of concrete facts still full of as many gaps as those of Marco himself. The film was screened in a parallel section of the Venice Film Festival.
Second Prize’ won the Golden Biznaga and the awards for best direction and editing at the last Malaga Festival. Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez travel through the time of the Malaga band Los Planetas, up to the gestation and recording of their third album, one of the pillars of Spanish indie rock, ‘Una semana en el motor de un autobús’ (1998). But the film is neither a strict ‘biopic’ about the band, nor a generational film or a portrait of an era, but appeals to the legend mixing it with real facts.
Something similar happens with ‘La estrella azul‘, a film made by Javier Macipe about Mauricio Aznar, the leader of the Zaragozan band Mas Birras, which competed in the New Directors section of last year’s San Sebastian Festival. The film talks about Aznar’s personal crisis and the collective crisis of the band Mas Birras, but it soon delves into the inner and outer journey that the protagonist, played by Pepe Lorente, made in Latin America in search of his musical roots and fleeing from the long shadow of heroin addiction.
