12/02/2010

Actor-director Carlos Iglesias goes back to the Franco years with his second feature, Ispansi (which means “Spaniards” in Russian).

The film shoot, which kicked off in Switzerland in October, has returned to the latter country and will relocate to Seville in the next few days. It will last a total of nine weeks.

The film is co-produced by Spanish production companies Maestranza Films and 1 Franco 14 Pesetas and Switzerland’s Saga Production.

Another recurring theme in the Madrid-born director’s short filmography is the emigration of Spaniards to other European countries during the oppressive Francoist regime. While his debut work, Crossing Borders (whose curious sequel was a documentary entitled Un Euro 3,60 Lei), looked at workers seeking a better future in Swiss factories, Ispansi focuses on the so-called "children of the war", who were evacuated to the Soviet Union during the civil conflict that devastated Spain in the 1930s and were never able to return to their native country.

The story centres on two completely opposing characters, two natural enemies, a Falangist nurse who hides her identity (Esther Regina) and a political commissar of the Spanish Communist Party (Iglesias). They meet and fall in love on a train full of children fleeing from Moscow to the Urals after the offensive by Adolf Hitler’s troops in 1941.

Antonio Pérez and Roberto Boner are producing Ispansi for a budget of €5m. Alta Classics has bought the Spanish distribution rights, as they did for Crossing Borders.

(Translated from Spanish)