– Eloy Enciso combines documentary, history and fiction to investigate and expose the forgotten concentration camps of the Franco regime following the Spanish Civil War
Elsa Pereira in Todo es cárcel
Eloy Enciso’s new film (Arraianos, Endless Night), entitled Letters from an Inner Exile, is competing this week in the official international competition section of the 37th FIDMarseille. The film is based on a series of letters reconstructed from the real-life testimonies of survivors of Franco’s concentration camps. These camps — more than two hundred facilities for both men and women — have been scarcely addressed in Spanish film and television, aside from the historical reconstructions in Las noches de Tefía (a series about a detention centre for homosexuals on Fuerteventura), and the feature film San Simón (set on the island of the same name in the Ría de Vigo).
The project is the result of extensive research carried out through hybrid approaches that combine fiction and documentary. Enciso has crafted a film that allows its characters, landscapes and buildings to breathe, letting his camera linger unhurriedly, and stretching out moments to such an extent that audiences accustomed to fast pacing may well come to detest it. His work – as in his previous films – encourages reflection, reading between the lines and a radical form of naturalism that blends harmoniously with non-fiction, despite the film being constructed as a work of fiction.
Letters from an Inner Exile follows a photographer (played by the film’s sole professional actress, Elsa Pereira) who normally lives in Berlin, but travels alone, by train and by car, around Spain (visiting places such as Alicante, Madrid and Segovia), capturing images of these locations. She is preparing a documentary project focusing on Franco’s concentration camps, drawing on the tragic story of Carmen and Ángel, two lovers separated by the war, to whom she lends a voice with the help of non-professional actors she selects along the way. But news of a relative’s death, and the need to divide their estate among her siblings – who differ from one another in every possible sense – forces her to put her work on hold and reconnect with her estranged family in Galicia.
Letters from an Inner Exile (with dialogue in Galician and Spanish) alternates between different storylines. One follows the filmmaker-researcher (the director’s alter ego) delving into the semi-hidden past of a country afflicted by chronic silence; another recounts the story of the lovers whose relationship was brutally cut short by fascism (heard mostly in voice-over); and the last centres on a family forcibly reunited around a deceased relative, reflecting a Cain-like country struggling to agree on how to manage a legacy that is moral rather than material.
Letters from an Inner Exile is produced by Filmika Galaika and Umbracle Cinema. La Machina will handle its distribution in Spain and international sales.
(Translated from Spanish)
