Spain

Synopsis

The year is 1938, in the heart of the Civil War in Spain. The film industry has also split into two opposing sides, with the studios in Madrid and Barcelona remaining faithful to the Republic. As one of the many collaborations between General Franco and Adolf Hitler, Germany invites a group of filmmakers, who sympathise with the new regime, to shoot two versions, one in German and the other in English, of the Andalusian musical drama “The Girl of Your Dreams”, in the UFA studios in Berlin.

Happy to leave the war behind them, the tiny troupe of Spaniards, captained by the director Blas Fontiveros, starts filming in Hitler’s Berlin. They soon discover that they have escaped one war only to end up in another, and that the hospitality of Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda, has more to do with the young cinema of the actress Macarena Granada. What’s more, the only Andalusian- looking extras they can find in Germany are gypsies in a concentration camp.

That is when a seed of doubt starts to germinate in all of them, that maybe life itself is more important than a film.
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Fernando Trueba

Written by: Rafael Azcona, David Trueba

Produced by: Christina Huete, Eduardo Campoy, Andres Vicente Gomez

Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe

Editing: Carmen Frías

Production Design: Gerardo Vera

Costume Design: Lala Huete, Sonia Grande

Original Score: Antoine Duhamel

Cast: Antonio Resines, Penélope Cruz, Götz Otto, María Barranco, Juan Luis Galiardo, Neus Asensi, Santiago Segura, Hanna Schygulla, Jesús Bonilla, Mirosláv Táborský, Heinz Rilling, Loles Leon, Johannes Silberschneider, Jorge Sanz, Karel Dobrý, Rosa Maria Sardà, Karel Dobrý

Nominations and Awards

  • European Actress 1999
  • Feature Film Selection 1999