The documentary on the life of artist Pepa Flores, directed by Aragonese filmmaker Blanca Torres, and the Czech feature film set in communist Czechoslovakia in 1953, will screen this afternoon at the Fundación Ibercaja Patio de la Infanta at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
The story of José María Javierre, the man from Jaca who became the first Spaniard to race in the Tour de France, is told by Ignacio and Carlos Naya in ‘Isolé,’ the latest Aragonese documentary in this edition
“No Spanish artist has embodied Spain’s recent history quite like Marisol. Marisol is the best national symbol of this contradictory Spain, and a spectacular portrait of the changes women underwent in the last quarter of the 20th century. But above all, she is a figure in constant conflict with fame. A struggle between Pepa Flores, the flesh-and-blood woman, and the idol of the masses,” says Blanca Torres, the Aragonese director behind the latest documentary in competition at this fourth edition of the Saraqusta Film Festival: ‘Marisol, Call Me Pepa’. It will screen at 7:00 p.m. at the Fundación Ibercaja Patio de la Infanta, followed at 9:00 p.m. by the Czech feature film in competition ‘Brothers’ (‘Hermanos’), which will conclude the screenings.
The film will be presented by actress Elena Ballesteros and is set in October 1953, when five friends decide to flee communist Czechoslovakia and make their way to West Berlin. They manage to cross the heavily guarded border, but are soon discovered in East German territory. Unwittingly, they set in motion the largest military operation since World War II: twenty thousand members of the German police and the Soviet army are mobilized, all because of five teenagers.
Torres attended a press conference, where she explained that her documentary shows “how a national legend is created. To do this, we brought together people who have an emotional connection to Pepa: because she is a childhood idol, a role model for women… that question—why someone becomes a legend—is what we try to answer in the documentary. A legend doesn’t set out to be one. We all build it together.”
The director was joined at the press conference by Gabriel Georgiev, producer of ‘War of Letters,’ a series directed by Victor Chouchkov and Zoran Petrovski that will screen this afternoon at 5:00 p.m. in the Patio de la Infanta at Fundación Ibercaja as part of Panorama Saraqusta. “The series takes us deep into the political intrigues of 10th-century Bulgaria. It chronicles the final days of Tsar Simeon the Great’s life and the months following his death. It is a pleasure for us to screen the series at the Saraqusta Film Festival because it has never been shown outside of Bulgaria before,” Georgiev emphasized.
The morning press conference at the Caesaraugusta Theater Museum was also attended by Ignacio Naya and Carlos Naya, directors of ‘Isolé’, the documentary that today brought to a close the screenings of Aragonese documentaries that have taken place at the museum throughout this week. The protagonist of ‘Isolé’ is José María Javierre, from Jaca, who became the first Spaniard to ride the Tour de France, doing so solo, without help or a team.
“It was a story that had been hidden away in the Pyrenean valleys for many years, until a cycling historian brought it to light in a Belgian magazine. It became known in Spain, and we’ve turned it into a documentary,” said Ignacio Naya. In addition, Carlos noted that “we felt that, starting with Javierre, we could tell the story of the Tour de France in its early editions. It was a sport of adventure and epic proportions, and there is a vast collection of anecdotes. We had to highlight Javierre’s story because he finished the Tour twice, which makes him a great athlete considering the conditions back then.”
The final panel of this edition was titled “Sharing the History of Aragón”. The panel featured Sergio Martínez, director of Historia de Aragón, a startup at the University of Zaragoza created in response to calls from the people of Aragón to preserve the region’s history and culture.