Smoke & Mirrors

In Spain, Luis Roldán, the former director general of the Civil Guard, flees the country after embezzling millions in public money. To avoid capture he goes to a former intelligence agent, Francisco Paesa. Paesa agrees to help him, then takes the money as well and stages his own death. The subject is not corruption but one man deceiving everybody at once. Paesa tells a different story to the fugitive, to the state and to his own partner, and the film does the same to the viewer; who knows what stays unclear to the end. The form has the texture of the nineties: cold colour, bank offices, hotel rooms, passport queues. The narrator is Paesa's former partner and he is not reliable either. The source is a book by the journalist Manuel Cerdán; the events rest on a real scandal that shook Spain in the nineties, and Paesa really was presumed dead for years. Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos wrote the screenplay together. Eduard Fernández plays Paesa and won the best actor prize at the San Sebastián film festival for it. Jose Coronado and Carlos Santos are in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Spanish crime cinema drawn from real events. Who it is not for: anyone who will struggle to follow; the film moves fast between a large number of names, companies and countries.