Writer/Director Alejandro Amenábar talks to Fest Track about history, location and human interaction in regards to his new period drama world premiering in the Special Presentations section of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario [Canada].
00:28I'm here in Toronto, Ontario for the Toronto International Film Festival.
00:58One day, someone will know from the one who told us great stories, the best of all.
01:06His.
01:08First of all, it's a relationship and I'm pretty interested in what happens among or between human beings.
01:22And in this case, when I started to do my research about the life of Miguel de Cervantes, I found in some of the history books this hypothesis of these two guys.
01:36It is known that they met a few times at least and there was this rumor about this possible special relationship between the two of them.
01:48And I thought it was really, really interesting in order to explore and to understand what was going on in that period of time in Algiers and what was going on in the mind of Cervantes.
02:00Cervantes.
02:02Cervantes.
02:04Cervantes.
02:05Cervantes.
02:06Cervantes.
02:07Cervantes.
02:08Cervantes.
02:09Cervantes.
02:10Cervantes.
02:11Cervantes.
02:13Cervantes.
02:14Cervantes.
02:15Cervantes.
02:16Cervantes.
02:17¡ لو, por favor!
02:18A este lo mata con no.
02:19¡Yo no soy nadie!
02:20Yo soy Zebra.
02:21Por lo que piden por nosotros de aquí no nos rescata ni el rey.
02:24Pude que estos caballeros le miren ahora por encima del hombro.
02:28Pero tu serás hombre de letras.
02:31¿Lo ¿estáis viendo?
02:33Una mano con un pañuelo.
02:35La mano siempre se escondía.
02:37Hasta que se acercó un cautivo.
02:39Do you know what I am?
02:40I am Casamaja, Lord of the Rings.
02:42Ego drives everything.
02:44Yes.
02:45And with obviously Cerates and the Bay, it's about the ego.
02:50But it's also about finding something deeper.
02:53Yes, I think it's one of as many elements in this particular period of Cervantes' life,
03:02it comes as a surprise.
03:04You think that this is going to be a thing about maybe ego and about, I mean,
03:10Hassan Maha being the villain of this story because, of course, he was the captor.
03:15He was the guy who held all these slaves for him.
03:21But the interesting thing for me was trying to explore this character
03:28and trying to find the humane things in him.
03:32This is, Hassan Maha was a guy who had in a very similar situation
03:37to what Cervantes was living in that moment.
03:40He was being captured by the Muslims and he converted to Islam.
03:47And then he was able to become even the governor, the ruler of Algiers.
03:54And that's something that was offered somehow that opportunity to Cervantes himself.
03:59So these two guys have things in common.
04:01And I wanted to start the relationship, of course, as a relationship full of tension
04:08and not seeing this Hassan Maha as the mentor of Cervantes.
04:14But then I wanted it to evolve.
04:17And as you can see in the film, it's not as clear who is the captive by the end of the movie.
04:23Oh, shit.
04:38Well, we were sold to the dreaded Bahá.
04:44There they were put us on a grill
04:47and they were locked up until we could pay our very expensive rescate.
04:58When I did the research about Algiers in those times,
05:01it really shocked me the kind of life and the kind of sexual freedom
05:05they had even in the streets you could find,
05:08you could see the courteurs walking around,
05:11walking by with their boyfriends
05:14and that's totally unbelievable for those times
05:18and nowadays even for some places, some cultures,
05:22but in Spain I can imagine how shocking it must have been for Cervantes
05:28getting to know all that culture
05:31and I wanted to portray that in the movie as well
05:34and also talking, I wanted to talk about freedom in every level,
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