15/12/2021 - The French actor has been appearing in the first fiction feature by David Pujol, a dramedy also starring Pol López, Iván Messeguer, Clara Ponsot, Nicolas Cazalè and Paco Tous

The film Esperando a Dalí (lit. “Waiting for Dalí”) is currently in post-production, after having been shot over a six-week period this autumn on the Costa Brava and in Barcelona. After a lengthy career as a documentary director, its helmer, David Pujol (El Bulli, historia de un sueño, Dalí’s Last Masterpiece), is thus making the leap to fiction. José García (seen recently in Little White Lies 2 [+see also:
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The screenplay, penned by Pujol himself, is set in Cadaqués in the 1970s, when legendary painter Salvador Dalí used to live in the town – a place that the surrealism coursing through the artist’s works really rubbed off on. With the Mediterranean as a backdrop, the film blends culinary, romantic and social topics in a marriage between drama and comedy.

Spanish, French and Catalan are the languages that will be spoken by the protagonists. Said characters are two brothers, Fernando (played by Iván Massagué) and Alberto (Pol López), chefs at the best French restaurant in Barcelona, who flee to Cadaqués in 1974 because of the political involvement of one of them. Once there, they will be sucked in by the magical atmosphere instilled by Dalí. Jules (José García), the disorganised and charismatic owner of a beach bar called The Surreal, hires them as dishwashers and will encourage them to share his obsession with Salvador Dalí. Jules’s over-the-top admiration will lead the brothers on treacherous and surreal adventures, through which they will have to learn to love, work – and live!

Pujol is a director, screenwriter and producer who trained at the University of New Haven (Connecticut, USA). In 1993, he returned to Barcelona to study at the CECC with Héctor Fáver. Three years later, he joined the advertising production house La cosa de les pel·lícules. In 2005, he kicked off his career as a documentary director, writing and directing the series about the history of Ferrán Adriá’s famous restaurant, El Bulli, historia de un sueño (2009), together with Adriá himself.

Subsequently, in 2011, he helmed the TV movie Morir en 3 actes as well as a new collaboration with Adrià: Documenting documenta: El Bulli en Kassel, starring pop-art pioneer Richard Hamilton. In 2013, he began working in partnership with the Dalí Foundation, with the non-fiction film Dalí-Pitxot. La alegoría de la memoria, which won the AVICOM First International Prize. Furthermore, in 2015, he directed the documentary about the unforgettable artist’s Theatre-Museum Dalí’s Last Masterpiece.

Esperando a Dalí is a production by Fishcorb Films and Arlong Productions, and its international sales will be entrusted to Embankment Films.

(Translated from Spanish)