15/05/2006

Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida has been chosen to play the lead in Oscar, el color del destino, a film based on the life of Spanish surrealist painter Oscar Domínguez (1906-1957). The principal photography of the debut feature by Lucas Fernández is scheduled to begin in August in Tenerife, before it takes its cast and crew to Paris, Madrid and Bulgaria.

This biopic – which Fernandéz hopes to present in Cannes next year – follows the rise and fall of Domínguez, from his early years in Tenerife, to his trips to Paris where he met artists like Picasso, Breton and Man Ray, through to his madness and suicide. The director and scriptwriter Eduardo del Llano have created a parallel fictional subplot set in contemporary Madrid, in which a woman played by Victoria Abril, her best friend (Emma Suãrez) and her boyfriend (Jorge Perugorría) search for a previously unknown painting by the artist.

With a €4.2m budget, Oscar, el color del destino is a co-production between Spain (Estudio Uno Producciones), France (Destiny Films) and the US (Media-Turner Productions), which was backed by the region of the Canary Islands, for whom the project is part of a wider campaign being organised for the painter's centenary. Dulce Xerach of the regional Canary Islands government hopes the film will contribute to rendering Dominguez’s art more internationally visible, as happened with the Frida Kahlo biopic that, according to Xerach, turned the Mexican painter into a "world icon".