Archive of films El Rey / El Rey

Colombia / France / Spain
2004, 93 min

Section: Another View
Year: 2005

A story based on actual events of the sixties and seventies focusing on the beginnings of the drug trade in Columbia. An ambitious and resourcefulness hoodlum named Pedro Rey, who learned to kiss and kill from Hollywood films, unleashes an as-yet unseen escalation of corruption.... The film was nominated for a Goya.

Synopsis

Columbia, 1966. The USA has promised to help with poverty, but they have mainly selected Columbia as a strategic location for stopping the Cuban Revolution. A bar owner and ambitious crook named Pedro Rey decides to take advantage of the gringos presence to change his name into a household word. Harry is an American Peace Corps volunteer who is smuggling Peruvian cocaine. He introduces Pedro to the drug trade and ‘El Rey’ comes up with the idea of processing cocaine in Columbia and he brings in a chemist to do just that. As business grows, El Rey learns the gamut of corruption and, blinded by his desire for power, he dreams of transforming the drug trade into the only “multinational company” that Columbia could pull off. Thus he writes the first chapter of drug trafficking history, setting it against the revolution?s disintegrating utopian theories: he is convinced that “the revolution is not made by poverty, but by money.”

About the director

Antonio Dorado graduated in journalism and literature, and he is a specialist in the area of audiovisual methods. Since 1990 he has been a professor of film and video arts at the Universidad del Valle. He has directed 28 documentaries, awarded, for example, at the IFF in Bogota and Cartagena. His documentary portrait Estanislao Zuleta, Biography of a Thinker (Estanislao Zuleta, Biografía de un pensador, 2000) was lauded as one of the 15 best Latin American audiovisual productions at the 2nd Encuentro Latinoamericano; in 2002 the same film won Best Documentary at the 20th Festival of Film and Video in Santa Fe, Argentina. His video Murmullos de agua took Best Documentary at the 2000 Encuentro Hispanoamericano del Milenio de Video Documental Independiente in San Jose, Costa Rica. El Rey (2004) is his feature film debut.

Contacts

Eurocine
33, ave. des Champs-Elysées, 750 08, Paris
France
Tel: +33 1 422 564 92
Fax: +33 1 422 573 38
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.eurocine.net

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About the film

Color, 35 mm

Section:	Another View

Director:	Antonio Dorado
Screenplay:	Antonio Dorado, Ilona Kunesova
Dir. of Photography:	Paulo Andres Perez, Juan Cristobal Cobo, Alain Hardy
Music:	Red House, Lucio Godoy
Editor:	Antonio Frutos, Nacho Ruiz Capillas
Producer:	Daniel Lesoeur, Tomas Lesoeur, Alina Hleap
Production:	Eurocine
Cast:	Fernando Solorzano, Cristina Umana, Vanessa Simon, Olivier Pages, Marlon Moreno
Contact:	Eurocine

www:	www.peliculaelrey.com

Guests

Ilona Lesoeur-Kunešová

Distributor

Tomáš Lesoeur

Distributor