Malaga (Spain), 21 Mar Imanol Uribe arrived today in Malaga (Southern Spain) to present his latest film, “They Arrived at Night”, with a script based on the true story of the only witness of the Jesuit crime in El Salvador, in which the priest and theologian of liberation, Ignacio Ellacuría, was murdered. “I think this film has, at least, the function of bringing to the present what happened and remembering it,” said the Basque director at a press conference in Malaga, where the film is competing in the Official Section of the 25th edition of the Malaga Film Festival. The filmmaker appeared with Juana Acosta, who gives life to Lucia, the cleaner of the university where the priests lived and were murdered, and the only witness to the crime; Carmelo Gómez, as Father Tojeira, on his “punctual” return to the cinema, as the Spanish actor hastened to specify, and Ben Temple, who plays Father Tipton, mediator when Lucia's worst family was going through it. “At this moment when the truth is so dissociated and everything is' fakes' and you don't know what to defend, the example of this humble woman, who played her life -literally-, to defend the truth, even without understanding why she couldn't tell it,” Uribe explained, “seems to me the best thread to tell the massacre of the Jesuits who defended the Liberation Theology, which I admired very much.” Uribe, born in El Salvador and educated with the Jesuits, had to tell this story that occurred in 1989, an event that has remained fresh in his memory. With a script by Daniel Cebrián, also present in Malaga together with producers Gerardo Herrero (Tornasol) and María Luisa Gutiérrez (Bowfinger), “They arrived at night” unexpectedly became topical because, 32 years later, the case of the massacre was reopened after the annulment last year of the trial against the masterminds of the murder. The trial, held at the Spanish National High Court a couple of weeks ago, ended with one of the soldiers involved, Inocencio Montano, sentenced to 133 years and 4 months in prison for that murder on the night of November 15-16, 1989. “The news caught us with the film shot and ending. At least 130 years have fallen to him, but most of the perpetrators were immediately amnesty and practically all of them are laughing in the street,” the director lamented, although he welcomes the fact that the case has been reopened in El Salvador and there is a warrant for the arrest of President Cristiani “to stand trial, because he wanted to sneak away”. “Something moves there, and if the film can bring anything, fantastic,” he summarized, with a smile on his face. The impossibility of filming in El Salvador caused the production to move to Cali, the hometown of Juana Acosta, who spent months preparing the role of Lucia with Lucia herself, in her home in California - she doesn't say the specific place out of fear, explains the Colombian actress-, even though more than 30 years have passed since the terrifying experience. Lucia and her family were deceived by the United States intelligence services, which held them and tortured them into backing out on the version that the perpetrators of the Jesuit massacre had been military. That is where the name of the film comes from, from the premonition of Ellacuría himself (Karra Elejalde) who, at one point in the film, comments to his companions “If they kill me during the day they will know it was the guerrillas, but if they arrive at night, it will be the military”. Carmelo Gómez plays Father Tojeria, one of the survivors of the massacre, “not as a character, but someone who is closest to the person,” commented Gómez, who claims to have been moved by the time he lived with the Jesuits to prepare the film by “how they deal with the commitment to life, and to death.” “They arrived at night,” Gómez explains, “it's a tragedy, with all its ingredients, told through a fascinating look, which is that of Juana (Lucia).” Gerardo Herrero thanked the Jesuits for their collaboration, who provided “a lot of information” and Lucia's excellent contact. For his part, Gutiérrez added that “this film had to be told; unfortunately, it is very current, and hopefully it will serve to stir consciences and that justice is done about what happened”. “I think that just because justice is done for that family that has had to flee their country from the horror of a war as we are seeing now so many families in Ukraine, only because of them, for honoring them, should this film be seen,” Acosta concluded. CHIEF aga/icn (photo)
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