Director

Rafa Russo

Uruguay, Spain | 2020 | 102 min | Spanish

• Producer Isabel Garcia Peralta, Juan Gona
• Production Company Aliwood Mediterráneo Producciones, Gonafilm, Cimarrón Cine, El año de la furia A.I.E
• Screenplay Rafa Russo
• Cinematography Daniel Aranyó
• Editing Marta Salas
• Sound Valeria Arcieri, Nuria Ascanio, Ana Caparró, Coque F. Lahera
• Cast Joaquin Furriel, Alberto Ammann, Daniel Grao, Martina Gusman, Maribel Verdu, Miguel Angel Sola
• Contacts

  Filmax International Sales

  g.antuna@filmax.com

About the Film

Director Rafa Russo notes that his screenplay does not seek to be a film about military dictatorship, but rather a story of love, friendship, and betrayal during an oppressive totalitarian era. It is a tale of human dignity that poses a thorny question about love and its ability to be a potential refuge against the political disgrace that leads 1972 Uruguay into a bloody era. Fear prevails over the film’s nerve and its moral tone, bringing it closer to a tight drama centered around a friendship between two young writers—talented in writing television comedies, with rather conflicting impulses—as the station management endeavours to limit the political satire in their popular sketches.

Diego and Leonardo are aware that censorship is inevitable, and that obedience to orders is only a matter of time. Their world and familiarity are shaken, and the film enters a maze of bilateral relations. In a small inn run by a Spanish immigrant and inhabited by leftwing youth, we witness feelings of love and outbursts of political struggle. On the other side, Lieutenant Rojas represents the dark being in a picture that will later be filled with blood and injustice. He is a silent man who escapes a dark marriage to become attached to a prostitute, expelling his demons that prevail during their sexual intercourse after every torture session he practices against young opponents. He then becomes the target of a failed assassination attempt by the opposition movement fighters; the Tupamaros.

The Year of Fury does not leave the story without blessing it with a heroic historical scene. When the residents of the capital Montevideo declare their support for the antifascist “No” political movement, the film gifts us an innovative channel that beckons the emotional participation of its viewers in a rare political act that completely changes the face of the Latin American country.

Ziad Al Khozai