Luna´s Game

Colour, 35mm
Spain, 2001, 96 min
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

Luna, a thirty-year-old professional cardplayer, has spent her whole life in the gambling environment. Her mother died in childbirth and her father, whom she rarely saw without a hand of cards, lost all his property and also his life to his passion when Luna was only ten years old. The only thing he left behind him was a snuff box. In the dramatic atmosphere of high stakes and tragic losses she has learned to “treat life as a game”. A game which, in spite of her attractive appearance, has turned her more into a man with a lifestyle characterised by whisky bottles, cigarettes, excitement and a sense of drifting. Luna’s obsession with cards turns her into a fearful gambler. Her player’s intuition has taken her away from dark gambling dens to the world of luxury residences. No one has any idea, however, what is tortuously feeding her obsession: her one aim in life is to avenge her father’s death. Her existence then becomes a drama whose outcome will be determined by freedom of choice.

About the director

Mónica Laguna (Madrid) studied image and sound at the CC university but spent much more time at the Griffith film studio where she worked on a number of feature films. In 1998 she founded the production company Mac Guffilm with which she made two shorts: The Fragrance of Roses (Sabor a rosas, 1989) and I Want It to Be Him (Quiero que sea él, 1990). It was only after a few years, in 1995, that she wrote the script for her first feature-length film, I’ve Got a House (Tengo una casa) which she made with the production company El Deseo. That same year she received a grant to write the script for Luna’s Game whose filming was made possible by producer Andrés Vicente Gómez.