Rebollo shoots third feature in Argentina

by Sergio Ríos Pérez

06/04/2011 - Film director Javier Rebollo, one of Spain’s strongest exponents of auteur cinema, has joined forces with producers José Nolla (Icónica) and Lluís Miñarro (Eddie Saeta) on his third feature, El Muerto y Ser Feliz (“The Dead Man and Being Happy”), which is also backed by Argentinean and French companies. The eight-week shoot kicked off on March 28 in Argentina and will later relocate to Barcelona. The film is expected to be completed by the end of 2011.

The script by Rebollo, Lola Mayo and Salvador Roselli centres on a hitman (veteran thesp José Sacristán, described by the director as “Spain’s greatest living actor”) who escapes from a hospital in Buenos Aires and “flees death by running towards it, like Sam Peckinpah’s characters, who have no choice left but to express themselves through their death”, Rebollo told Cineuropa.

Rebollo, whose previous features, What I Know About Lola [trailer] (2006) and Woman Without Piano [trailer] (2009), won awards at international festivals on account of their artistic rigour (see news), has found his ideal partner in producer Miñarro. Through his company Eddie Saeta, the latter has done a great job at the less commercial end of Spanish cinema (see news), backing movies like The Mosquito Net [trailer] (2010), Finisterrae(2010), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives [trailer] (2010), Birdsong (2009 ) and In the City of Sylvia [trailer] (2008).

In 2009, Rebollo was one of the most active members of the Filmmakers Against the Order collective, whose fierce opposition to the ministerial order devised by former ICAA director general Ignasi Guardans sparked a serious crisis within the Spanish film industry at the end of that year (see news). Despite all this, El Muerto y Ser Feliz received €500,000 from the aforementioned institution’s production support fund (see news).

(Translated from Spanish)