The 70th edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival was inaugurated with an ovation for prison history model 77 by Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos, who have been telling Spanish stories through cinema for more than twenty years. Definitely, prisons continue to be a setting with tremendous cinematic potential.
“The escape of 45 prisoners in 1978 caught our attention, after the existence of the COPEL (Coordinator of Prisoners in Struggle) from the jail, which is where everyone separates and their identity is erased. Then one day they come together and 200 people cut their wrists so that the press could enter and be able to tell about their living conditions. That was already amazing. They pursued the impossible, that people unite in a prison that functioned until 2017. This is a story that we have been working on since 2005,” said its director, Alberto Rodríguez from Seville.
“The context of the story is a moment in which the country could aspire to anything because we were on the border between dictatorship and democracy and that the story is told from inside a prison had a lot of meaning,” he said.
model 77 follows Manuel, a young accountant, imprisoned and awaiting trial for embezzlement, who faces a sentence of six to eight years, totally disproportionate for the crime committed. “Together with his cellmate, Pino, he joins COPEL, a collective that fights for the rights of common prisoners and amnesty. A war for freedom breaks out that will bring the Spanish prison system to its knees. If things are changing outside, they will have to do the same inside.”
“This is a hard film, a prison drama that talks about freedoms, where the cry of a society ended up reaching the jail, a jail that reflects the city,” Rodríguez said.
“It was striking that this leak occurred in the middle of the political transition. We began to document ourselves and we came to COPEL, the union of the self-styled social prisoners, after they granted amnesty to the political prisoners. They said, with some reason, that a dictatorship had judged them, but a democracy kept them imprisoned.
For Miguel Herran, the young protagonist (known for playing Rio in the series paper house), “it is truly surprising to meet one of the prisoners, in this case Daniel Pons who was in this jail and to see reflected in his face everything they have lived through, years of struggle and despair. Talking to him was very enriching, because you put yourself in front of someone who tells you in detail everything he has experienced, and even how he fought with rats for food. And today, at almost 80 years old, he is still fighting for the rights of prisoners, looking for a change. This is a long process and I believe that we are not on the wrong path, these are people who continue with this fight, reminding us that there are people who do not have a voice or vote, but who are not usually heard, of whom we do not know their context. This is an opportunity to change the prison system that we have, because we do not reform, we only punish, ”he said.
Speaking about the comedy of the film, Rodríguez said: “Humor is inherent in the human being, it is necessary to live. I didn’t want stereotyped characters, but rather for the viewer to feel them as human beings, so in this way the humor sought to appear naturally”.
On this same topic, the screenwriter Rafael Cobos added: “Humor is a fantastic tool, it serves to enhance the drama of life and it was perfect for this film so hard and so frontal so that the message gets through better, it had to have this escape . Even the chicken scene is quite real, they say there are even photos of that moment.
Source: Eluniverso
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