The 22nd Seville European Film Festival will host the world premiere of Els mals noms, Marc Ortiz Prades' feature film directorial debut. The film has been selected for the Rampa section, the part of the competition dedicated to emerging talent. The film is an intimate, austere and fragmented portrait of Florencio Pla Meseguer, popularly known as “La Pastora” (The Shepherdess), an intersex man born in 1917 who lived for more than 30 years as a woman, until he joined the guerrilla movement to escape the Spanish Civil Guard. This act was later exploited by Francoist propaganda, which turned him into a convenient scapegoat and blamed him for numerous unsolved crimes in the region. A dark legend that still lingers in the collective imagination today, it is here revisited by a filmmaker with extensive experience in advertising, short films and music videos, who approaches the story from a deeply human perspective.

“The personal connection I have with this story is one that cannot be broken. I grew up on the same streets where La Pastora once ran, I played in the woods where he used to hide, and my grandmother, who passed down his story to me, was one of his dressmakers," shares the screenwriter. The project is the result of years of compiling oral history, based on the testimonies from numerous people who knew Florencio directly or indirectly. The director has dramatized these accounts and distributed them throughout an intentionally minimal narrative structure, underlining that the events depicted in this film from part of a fragmented story with gaps.

Els mals noms has been conceived as both a demystification of the character and a celebration of difference, because, in the words of its director, “it is a chronicle of transformation and personal freedom in an era when being different was condemned.” Three actors, Adrià Nebot, Álex Bausá and Pablo Molinero (seen in the series The Plague [+lire aussi :
interview : Alberto Rodríguez et Rafae…
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critique
bande-annonce
interview : Javier Polo
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interview : Helena Taberna
fiche film]), portray the protagonist at different moments of his life in a feature film structured in chapters, each corresponding to a period and to a different name by which he was known. The cast is completed by Nacho Fresneda (the series El ministerio del tiempo, recently in the series Red Queen), Isak Férriz (the series Giants and Bank Under Siege [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche série]), Jordi Reverté, Ciara Ryan, Jaume Madaula, Morgan Blasco, Guillem Muñoz, Raquel Ferri, Patricia Bargalló, Felipe Pirazán, Abdelatif Hwidar, Álvaro Báguena, Àngel Fígols and Sílvia Sabaté.

The film was shot on location in the regions of Els Ports and Baix Maestrat in Castellón, and in Montsià, Terra Alta and Baix Ebre in Tarragona, in the natural landscapes where Florencio lived. For the filmmaker, Florencio symbolises difference and resistance to imposed norms: “The Civil Guard saw in his diversity the perfect quality for constructing a narrative where difference was portrayed as illegal, perverse, improper, sick — everything bad. My film aims to dismantle that falsehood and vindicate Florencio's humanity.”

El mals noms is produced by Paloma Mora for Admirable Films and TV ON Producciones, and Marc Muñoz for Lamalanga Produccions, and is supported by RTVE, À Punt, 3Cat, the Valencian Institute of Culture (IVC), the Catalan Institute for Cultural Enterprises (ICEC) and Afin SGR.