A film adaptation of the bestseller of the same name by Javier Cercas. The tale of an author who rediscovers her taste for writing when she comes across a moving story about an anonymous hero from the Spanish Civil War who saved the life of the writer Rafael Sánchez-Mazas, the co-founder of the Falange.
The young writer Lola who, after a successful start, fell silent and is now undergoing a personal and professional crisis, picks up the scent of a story dating from the last days of the Spanish Civil War. The enticing theme about an unknown hero, a soldier who saved the life of the now half-forgotten writer Rafael Sánchez-Mazas, founder and chief ideologist behind the fascist Falange party, awakens her zest to write and her curiosity to discover “what makes a hero”. Sánchez-Mazas, one of those directly responsible for the fratricidal conflict, was to have been shot, along with another fifty prisoners; however, during the execution, he managed to escape, running off in the rain into the woods to hide. Surprisingly, one of the Republican soldiers who discovered him as they combed the woods let him go. Sánchez-Mazas hid in the forest until the end of the war, protected by a mysterious trio of young men, calling themselves “forest friends”. This inglorious hero never forgets the soldier who, without a word, let him live. Lola not only manages to find the three “forest friends”, now in their eighties, but she sets out on the trail of the benevolent soldier. Without realising it, having found the truth, she also discovers herself…
112 min / Color, 35 mm
Director David Trueba
/ Screenplay David Trueba
/ Dir. of Photography Javier Aguirresarobe
/ Editor David Trueba
/ Producer Andrés Vicente Gómez
/ Production Lolafilms S.A.
/ Cast Ariadna Gil, María Botto, Diego Luna, Ramón Fontsere, Joan Dalmau, Alberto Ferreiro, Bruno Bergonzini
/ Contact Lolafilms Internacional, S.L
www: www.soldadosdesalamina.com
David Trueba (b. 1969, Madrid) wrote the script for the children’s TV programme Goose Soup. He studied journalism and, in Los Angeles, attended the prestigious American Film Institute. He earned fame in television as the director of the entertainment show Worst Programme of the Week, and has also appeared in films made by his friends. He has published a collection of stories, Occasional Articles, and the books Open All Night and Four Friends, which were translated into seven languages. He has written his own scripts, and the screenplays for his brother Fernando Trueba’s Two Much (1995) and La niña de tus ojos (The Girl of Your Dreams, 1998), and for Emilio Martínez-Lázaro’s Amo tu cama rica (1991) and Los peores años de nuestra vida (1994). For his debut La buena vida (The Good Life, 1996) he won the Luis Buñuel Prize for Best Film, and the Special Jury Prize at the KV IFF in 1997. The festival also screened his next film Obra maestra (2000). Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamina, 2003) is his third film.
Lolafilms Internacional, S.L
General Pardinas, 9, 1o dcha 2, 28001, Madrid
Spain
Phone: +34 91 436 7400
Fax: +34 91 435 59 94
E-mail: [email protected]
Miriam Lopez Jadraque
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