Fifteen years ago, Alberto Rodriguez and his usual collaborator in the script, Rafael Cobos, began documenting the plight of inmates in two of the most iconic prisons due to the harsh conditions in our country. -Barcelona Model and Carabanchel Model in Madrid- at the end of the Franco era. They gathered countless testimonies and testimonies about the terrible situations that took place there. police brutality and the reduction of prisoners to animal status by prison authorities. Other stories emerged along the way, including ‘Minimal Island’ and ‘The Man with a Thousand Faces’, and they thought this movie would never come to light due to the difficulty of the project.
That’s why ‘Modelo 77’ is so special to the director, who this Friday is opening the 70th edition of the San Sebastian Festival and could close a kind of trilogy with the two works mentioned. X-ray of our country’s society in the transition period up to the present day on issues involving ideology sewers of power and the relationship of the individual with the system through oppression and the permanence of fascist structures (still part of the regime in the seventies) and now being overshadowed.
“I had the feeling this was an untold episode. It is as if a page has fallen from the history book and has been completely forgotten.” From Alberto Rodriguez to EL PERIÓDICO. “At the end of the seventies, it seemed that there was anything to do in Spain, that any future was possible. There was an animalistic sense of freedom, and this contrasted with the reality of the prisoners who lacked it. It also seemed to me a very powerful thing that they aspire to this utopia. they did it by fighting. claim their rightsand this also seems to me a message to be heeded, given the chilling rise of the far right in Europe and the United States.
The movie spans three years and features the character of Manuel. Miguel Herran), a young man who allegedly entered the Modelo prison in 1976 and allegedly embezzled money. Witnessing a series of atrocities against human dignity, it will always be the eye of the beholder. Manuel will be humiliated, beaten, and gradually reach the prison microcosm hand in hand with his cellmate Pino (Javier Gutierrez) and other prisoners, recognizing their rights, were willing to rebel against the filthy conditions in which they lived by joining the union formed at Copel, Carabanchel.
“Choosing key events from this period was the most complex, because this is not a documentary film, we always had to express it through fiction within a coherent historical framework. I don’t consider myself a historian, I’m always more interested in the emotional part of the story. That’s why some episodes were so important, like the 77 revolt, which 200 men agreed to. cut the veinyes they had the will and the energy to do it as a protest and also so that the press could come in and the outside world could find out what really happened there.”
Of course, another important moment, no doubt, sewer leak One year after the prison of 45 prisoners. When there was no hope that the situation would improve, the only option was to save himself. “I didn’t want the escape to be any epic. I think it would betray the spirit of the movie. This is the simplest I’ve ever done. Actually, this escape is a kind of poetic justice for me, it also has to do with an illusion, a mirage”.
At a time of extreme individualism, ‘Model 77’ I sing to the unionthe possibility of thinking as a group rather than just itself. The director believes that this is the only way to solve today’s problems. “A song about the dignity of the individual, how to get out of a system made to alienate you and escape through collective struggle.”
Source: Informacion
