Basque directors Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño are stopping by at the Venice Film Festival for the first time, where they are demonstrating their fascination for the real-life case that their new film, Marco [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Aitor Arregi e Jon Garaño
scheda film], is based on. Screened in the Orizzonti section, it zooms in on a man who’s capable of taking the act of lying to an unprecedented level, painting an exaggerated portrait of the present and, perhaps, of ourselves.

Cineuropa: In Spain, people know about Enric Marco, a liar who masqueraded as a Nazi concentration camp survivor, but the story will be a surprise to those outside the country.
Aitor Arregi: And also for younger people in Spain, who don’t know about the real-life case.

Jon Garaño: The way this story is known in Barcelona is not the same as the way it’s known in the rest of Spain, because in Barcelona, Enric Marco took part in press conferences and gave talks. Where we’re based, in San Sebastián, for example, he’s not so well known.

And what does your movie add to what is already known – in other words, the journalistic coverage of the events, the book The Impostor by Javier Cercas and the documentary Ich bin Enric Marco?
AA: It’s been a long process: initially, this film was going to be a documentary, then a hybrid, and finally, it ended up as a fiction feature. In this case, more than talking about the facts and about what happened, we wanted to go into them in more depth and tell the truth that might be behind it all. Fiction goes beyond the headlines; we want to see what continues reverberating after the story. Why does Marco do these things? Why, after the scandal comes to light, does he just carry on and create another version of himself? All of this seemed mysterious and fascinating to us, and that’s why we wanted to dig deeper into the truth.

JG: Our point of view is different to those of the documentary and the book. This is our Enric Marco. What caught our attention the most was how he reacted when the scandal blew up. If I were him, I would have stayed holed up at home, but he does just the opposite: he exposes himself across the media. Marco begins to lie because his everyday life does not satisfy him, and he discovers that he has a superpower – talking – and by using it, he manages to gain admiration from people outside his circle: young, upper-middle-class university students from Barcelona. Suddenly, by changing his very being and creating a new Enric Marco, he achieves things that have so far been unthinkable for him. He is so proud of his creation that he doesn’t want to separate from it. Our Marco has nothing to do with the previous ones; it shows how we see him from our point of view. His reaction after the scandal erupts is what we are most interested in, and it’s what this film adds. That and other interesting themes, such as whether cinema can be useful in order to depict reality, or what the truth actually is.

AA: This story would not have been the same if we’d told it ten years ago. We are in an era where post-truth and social networks are up for discussion. Sometimes, the passing of time improves a story.

Do we all construct a character in search of affection, acceptance or an audience? Are we all Marco?
AA: That is the connection with the viewer, even though many people can feel uncomfortable in the presence of this charming, talkative, wily character. What he did is no joke, lying about the extremely sensitive topic of the Nazi Holocaust. But why does he do it? Because he wants to feel more admiration, he wants to feel loved – almost all of us can identify with that. Everyone shows the best version of themselves. Marco had that [impulse] and suffered from some kind of personality disorder that pushed him to be at the centre of interviews.

How can we be expected to empathise with a character with such a big ego, someone who’s also a compulsive liar?
AA: He’s a character who also prompts a certain fascination, as he makes decisions that are hard to understand. Why does he make his life increasingly difficult? He doesn’t believe he’s doing anything bad; he understands himself, which makes the viewer feel uneasy and powerless. He’s like a dangerous kid. There’s an interesting psychological case right there.

Finally, what makes Marco so enigmatic?
JG: He’s still a mystery to us: we wanted to spark debate by leaving the movie open. We would love viewers to talk about it from different points of view. He’s a character that generates mixed feelings – there will be people who can understand him and others who will never be able to do so. He’s so complex that he ends up being fascinating to us. Sometimes, I don’t understand him, but we didn’t want to judge him or whitewash him.