12/01/2023 - The horror film, which brings to life a popular Spanish legend, is directed by Ángel Gómez Hernández, and stars Javier Botet and Macarena Gómez

El hombre del saco [+see also:
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film profile] is the title of the new feature by Cadiz-born Ángel Gómez Hernández (Voces [+see also:
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interview: Ángel Gómez
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interview: Julio Fernández
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interview: Esteban Roel and Juanfer An…
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Fiction or reality? Legend or a dark, true story from Spain? These are the questions posed by the film, which dares to take on a figure so popular that it has continued to fuel the nightmares of millions of children all over the world for years. The shoot took place in the autumn, on location in Cadiz, Madrid and Gran Canaria. Ignacio Cucucovich, of Uruguayan outfit Mother Superior, states: “As a producer and a fan of genre film, I dedicate my time to researching and developing stories that scare people, and if they’re popular and universal, so much the better. We realised that ‘El Viejo de la Bolsa’ — as he’s known in the Río de la Plata area, where I come from — and the ‘Ropavejero’ in Mexico are based on a real-life character that existed in Spain and then spread all around the world.”

The director remarks: “When producer Álvaro Ariza, of Esto También Pasará, offered this project to me, we talked about the very first monster that any child finds out about early in their life, even before Frankenstein or Dracula… Millions of kids from myriad cultures and countries have heard of him. But who is the Sack Man, really?” Because this mythical character “symbolises the fear that we all felt as children when it was time to go to sleep”. With this movie, Gómez Hernández wants to recapture “that chill we felt when we believed that, in a dark corner of our bedroom, there was someone watching us. That unsettling and inescapable feeling experienced by any boy or girl who, after misbehaving, believes for certain that a horrifying monster will come to take him or her away,” sums up the filmmaker.

El hombre del saco is a production by Esto También Pasará, Mother Superior and Bowfinger International Pictures (on 27 January, the three companies will release another terrifying collaboration in Spain, Gustavo Hernández Ibáñez’s Lobo feroz [+see also:
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film profile], starring Adriana Ugarte and Javier Gutiérrez in the lead roles), in conjunction with AF Films, BTF Media, Atresmedia Cine, CREA SGR and Mogambo. The film will hit Spanish screens this year, and will subsequently air on Prime Video.

(Translated from Spanish)