19/04/2017 - Antonio de la Torre breathes life into José Mujica in this reconstruction of the years he was held captive by the Uruguayan military dictatorship; it is being helmed by the director of Mr. Kaplan

Antonio de la Torre has been in hiding for weeks, as he wants to avoid anyone catching a glimpse of his new appearance. While the actor put on a good few kilos for his lead performance in Daniel Sánchez Arévalo’s Gordos [+see also:
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Interview with Daniel Sánchez-Arévalo,…
film profile] in 2009, he has now done the mirror opposite: true to his self-demanding nature, he has lost a dramatic amount of weight in order to breathe life into former president José Mujica, who was held prisoner for 12 years (between 1972 and 1985) as punishment by the soldiers who ruled Uruguay at the time. He will play this role in A Twelve-Year-Night [+see also:
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film profile], a film that is based on true events and is being directed by Álvaro Brechner (Bad Day to Go Fishing [+see also:
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According to the synopsis provided by the producers, it tells the story of three men who are subjected to a secret experiment through which the military dictatorship attempts to drive them insane. Tossed into minute cells, they are unable to talk, and can barely see, eat or sleep. With their bodies and minds pushed beyond all imaginable limits, the hostages put up an existential fight to escape from this horrific reality that has condemned them to madness.

The screenplay was written by Brechner himself, based on the book written by Mauricio Rosencof – a playwright, novelist, poet and journalist nicknamed “the Russian”, who was Director of Culture at the Montevideo Mayor’s Office – and Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro, aka “el Ñato”, who was elected senator, and then in 2011 took over the post of Uruguay’s Minister of Defence. In the cast of the film, the lead actor from The Fury of a Patient Man [+see also:
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A Twelve Year Night is a Tornasol Films, Alcaravan AIE and Hernández y Fernández Producciones Cinematográficas production. It is being co-produced by Haddock Films (Argentina) and Manny Films (France), and is benefiting from the involvement of Movistar Plus+.

(Translated from Spanish)