‘El Cepa’ returns to Seminci to commemorate the anniversary of Pilar Miró’s ‘The Cuenca Crime’

10/19 /2019.- The 64th Valladolid International Film Festival (Seminci) commemorates the 40th anniversary of the shooting of Pilar Miró’s film The Cuenca Crime with the special screening of the documentary Regresa el Cepa, by Víctor Matellano.

The premiere was attended by the documentary’s director as well as by two of the cast members in the mythical movie who also appear in Matellano’s film, Willy Montesinos and Jose Manuel Cervino, in addition to cinematographer David Cortázar and screenwriter Antonio Durán.

The documentary revisits the story of The Cuenca Crime – the film by Pilar Miró that was eventually released in 1981 after facing serious problems to overcome censorship in the midst of Spain’s transition to democracy.  The film’s connecting thread is the comeback of the actor who played “El Cepa”, Willy Montesinos, around which the documentary intersperses testimonies and interviews with legal specialists, screenwriters, experts and actors who took part in Miró’s film.

The doc’s director Víctor Matellano said he was “very happy to screen his film at Seminci” and emphasized the great importance of cinema “as a driver of change —something that Pilar Miró’s film clearly attests to. He moreover recalled the great shock he experienced after watching the film when he was still a teenager, and how that impact eventually led him to make this documentary. However, he admitted to “never even imagining that he would get to work with the original movie actors.”

 The importance of cinema as a driver of social change was likewise emphasized by the rest of the documentary’s cast and crew who joined the film’s presentation in Valladolid. Jose Manuel Cervino, in turn, provided an exciting testimony when he recalled his own experience on attending the film’s premiere, “in times that seemed fun to live, but were really very difficult”. Willy Montesinos, on the other hand, stressed the importance of the film at “a very fragile time in Spain’s transition to democracy, when it was imperative to provide stability for the latter.”

In  the view of those who have been responsible for making this documentary film, Regresa El Cepa is a revealing account about the history of Spanish democracy that will surely attract the interest of those who attended movie theatres across Spain in  August 1981 in order to watch The Cuenca Crime:  one of the most controversial films of Spain’s  transition period .