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The bravery of Rodrigo Cortes it is almost as unappealable as his cinematographic knowledge. He captivated the world by burying Ryan Reynolds alive, dared to turn Robert de Niro into a blind seer, and transformed a Lois Duncan youth novel into a good movie starring Uma Thurman, but shooting with big Hollywood stars doesn’t stop the collaborator from ABC –author of the unmissable Verbolario– continue taking steps forward, always taking risks.
The director, one of the Spanish filmmakers with the most international projection, goes back behind the cameras with ‘Love in its place’, a historical drama about love and survival in the heart of the Warsaw ghetto.
The film, which will be released on December 3, tells the true story of a group of Jewish actors who, with the intention of bringing some hope to their compatriots, plays a musical comedy in the theater while a choice of life and death shakes its existence.
After two years rowing against the tide, cinema is finally beginning to raise its head. Hence, ‘Love in its place’ finally appears, secretly shot in the middle of a pandemic as a fitting tribute to art and the effort of all who make it possible; a cinematographic experience that, in the words of Cortés, “discovers a side of the occupation that the cinema had not yet shown: how all kinds of artists continued to act, even in the most unlikely circumstances, to light a flickering flame in the middle of the darkness ». In the same way, the director aspires to relight, with the wick of his story, the light of that ritual that is to enjoy cinema in theaters.
To do this, he shows his ingenuity and his nimble pen to the script, written by Cortés himself together with renowned German novelist David Safier in a libretto that recreates the staging of the play ‘Milosc Szuka Mieszkania’ (‘Love seeks an apartment’), which was performed in the winter of 1942 at the Fémina Theater in Warsaw. Pending the premiere of ‘The joke’, one of the four episodes of the ‘remake’ of ‘Stories to sleep’ that he will present at the Sitges Festival, Rodrigo Cortés focuses on this film on a group of actors during the performance of the comedy musical written in the Warsaw ghetto by the Polish-Jewish playwright and composer Jerzy Jurandot, of whose songs only the lyrics survived.
International cast
Danish actress Clara Rugaard, a sensation at Sundance with the film ‘I Am Mother’, and the interpreter Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, star of ‘Coda’ and ‘Sing Street’, lead the cast of this film inspired by real events. Magnus Krepper (‘Millenium 2: The Girl Who Dreamed of a Match and a Can of Gasoline’), Freya Parks (‘Les Miserables’), Jack Roth (‘Bohemian Rahapsody’) and Henry Goodman (‘The New Pope’), among others, they complete the cast of a film whose music has been composed for the film respecting the tradition of musical theater of the moment.
The film is produced by Adrián Guerra and Núria Valls, from Nostromo Pictures, together with Love Gets a Room AIE, with the collaboration of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the participation of Televisión de Cataluña and Crea SGR. out Lionsgate, while A Contracorriente Films will distribute the film in Spain from December 3.
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