Even The Rain
Idealist director Sebastián (Gael García Bernal) and his bullish producer Costa (Luis Tosar) are making a film about Christopher Columbus.
Sebastián is keen to present a revisionist historical epic that presents a warts-and-all portrait of Columbus’s rapacious greed for gold and his abusive treatment of the native population, pitting him against Dominican friar Bartolome de las Casas, who refuses to just stand by and turn a blind eye to Columbus’s abuses.
But filming in Bolivia is no easy business, with an escalating conflict over the privatisation of water supplies in the city of Cochabamba, where the cast and crew are filming, threatening the progress of the venture.
Acclaimed Spanish director Icíar Bollaín (Mataharis, LFF 2007) here works with Ken Loach’s habitual screenwriter Paul Laverty, juxtaposing two converging plotlines to provide a thoughtful dissection of the politics of filmmaking and the legacies of colonialism.
Setting the Bolivian Water War of 2000 against Columbus’s colonisation of South America, Even the Rain is socially conscious cinema, distinguished by muscular performances and a robust political edge. - BFI
Starring: Luis Tosar, Gael García Bernal, Juan Carlos Aduviri, Karra Elejalde, Carlos Santos, Raúl Arévalo, Najwa Nimri, Emma Suárez, Dani Currás