Undercover

A young police officer is sent to the Basque Country with a new identity, a new name and no return date. Her task is to infiltrate ETA. She moves into the neighbourhood, takes a job, makes friends and lives under that identity for years. She can tell nobody the truth, not even her family. The subject is not espionage but a false life becoming real. The friendships she builds are genuinely built, and at a certain point she struggles to tell whom she is betraying. The film does not turn this into a story of heroism; it counts the cost item by item. The form makes its tension out of silence rather than noise. A phone ringing, a look, an answer that comes a beat late. There is very little gunfire; the danger is a wrong sentence. The source is real: the film rests on the story of a National Police officer who spent more than seven years infiltrating ETA under a false name. It won best film at the Spanish Goya awards; Carolina Yuste won best actress and Arantxa Echevarría and Amèlia Mora won best original screenplay. Luis Tosar plays her handler. Who it is for: viewers who like thrillers from real events and are interested in recent Spanish history. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the political background of the conflict; the film largely draws ETA as a threat and does not open the context.