También la lluvia

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DIRECTOR Icíar Bollaín

CAST Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar, Karra Elejalde, Juan Carlos Aduviri

A multi-layered drama set in Bolivia where an idealistic director is shooting a film about Columbus.  Life begins to imitate art as two stories of exploitation – the 1512 rebellion against Spanish rule and a 21st century conflict over water privatisation – entwine with explosive results.  Uplifting and thought provoking. (2010 Spain / Mexico / France 103 minutes Subtitled)

This film about the never ending exploitation of the powerless by the powerful is ostensibly about the making of a Christopher Columbus biopic covering his discovery of America and ensuing exploitation of native Americans. The filming of the biopic itself is simply another layer in the same cycle of exploitation with the troubled production’s own exploitation of cheap local labour. The film within this film exploits the Indians just as Columbus did. This is embodied in the subtle performance of Gael García Bernal as Sebastian, the director, who has vague sympathies for his low-paid workers but places his film above everything.  It’s an audacious and multi-layered conceit which draws wider contemporary parallels as it dramatises one of the extra’s struggle with a foreign company attempting to privatise the local water and sell it back to the American Indians across whose land it flows.

BBFC advice: Contains strong language

“With Ken Loach's The Angels' Share bound for Cannes, here's a timely reminder of the film-maker's considerable influence. Regular Loach screenwriter Paul Laverty and director Icíar Bollaín (who acted in Land and Freedom) have constructed a smart, socially aware fable about a Spanish film crew – headed by Gael García Bernal as a kind of heartthrob Herzog – who arrive in Bolivia to shoot an epic about Columbus's entry into the New World, only to start blindly perpetuating the exploitation their own project seeks to denounce. As production gradually unravels amid protests over the privatisation of the region's water supply, some tense, pointed action ensues. Bollaín cranes her camera to highlight the real-world injustices developing beyond the on-location ego trips. There are striking performances from Luis Tosar as a cynical yet flexible producer and Juan Carlos Aduviri as the native who becomes a figurehead for those who don't have the luxury of playacting.”
Mike McCahill, The Guardian

UK RELEASE 18 May 2012

RUNNING TIME 103 minutes

COUNTRY Spain / Mexico / France

LANGUAGE Spanish / Quechua (Subtitled)

official film website and trailer 
IMDb film information