The Chosen

Spain, 1937. Ramón Mercader, a young communist fighting in the civil war, is recruited by Soviet intelligence and put through a preparation that will take years. A false name, a false life, a false romance, all of it built for one purpose: getting close to Leon Trotsky in his Mexican exile. What Mercader cannot tell even the people nearest to him is whose errand he is on. Antonio Chavarrías is far more interested in the preparation than in the killing, and in what years of sustained performance do to the performer. Alfonso Herrera plays Mercader and Hannah Murray the woman he deceives. Trotsky was murdered in his house outside Mexico City in August 1940; Mercader served twenty years in prison for it.