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The film is based on the best-selling book by Javier Cercas, and delves deep into the tragedy of the Spanish civil war. The story describes a journalist going through a period of personal crisis and who investigates an episode which took place at the end of the civil war: the failure to execute a fascist ideologue, who was saved by a young soldier. In the novel, the protagonist was a man, but Trueba portrays him in the film as a woman. The search for Lola – played by an anguished Ariadna Gil (winner of the Goy Award in 1993) – in the heart of his country’s turbulent recent past gives the director the opportunity of conducting a far-reaching and touching examination of the need for memory and the difficulty of perpetuating it. In search of a hero who has no wish to be a hero, Lola finds herself, meeting the now elderly perpetrator of that merciful gesture during those dark days. “I do not believe that novels can be transformed into films”, explains Trueba. “Adaptation can prove effective only if we find a different perspective which is totally independent of the original work”.

David Trueba
David Trueba studied journalism, and wrote the screenplays for films including “Amo tu cama rica“, “Los peores años de nuestra vida” (The Worst Years of our Lives), “Uno di troppo” (Two Much), “La niña dei tuoi sogni” (The Girl of Your Dreams) and the Oscar-nominated documentary Balseros. For the television, he co-directed the programme “El peor programa de la semana” (The Worst Show of the Week) and created the series “Qué fue de Jorge Sanz?” (Whatever Happened to Jorge Sanz?). Trueba also directed films such as “La Buena Vida” (The Good Life), “Obra Maestra” (Masterpiece), “Soldados de Salamina” (Soldiers of Salamis), “Bienvenido a casa” (Welcome Home), “La silla de Fernando” (Fernando’s Chair) and “Madrid, 1987“, which was selected for the Sundance Film Festival. He has published three novels, all published in Italy by Feltrinelli: “Abierto toda la noche” (Open All Night) (1995), “Cuatro amigos” (Four Friends) (1999) and “Saber perder” (Learning to Lose) (2008), for which he won the National Critics’ Award for the Best Novel and whose translation into French was a finalist in the prestigious Médicis Award. At the same time he worked as columnist for a number of newspapers.

David Trueba on Wikipedia >>