La Mirada - Jewels of Spanish Cinema
Thur 8 Mar 7pm Australian Premiere followed by Question and Answer session
Storm The Skies
(Asaltar Los Cielos)
Jose Luis Lopez-Linares and Javier Rioyo, 93 min, Spain 1996, Documentary.
An old man, seated at the desk in his office, is reading an article, behind him, to one side, is the autor of the act, a smart and pleasant young man. The twentieth of August 1940, just after five in the afternoon, we are in a house in Coyoacan, in the outskirts of México City. The young man moves, takes out an ice-pick that was hidden in his raincoat and strikes the skull of the old man. A deep shout of rage and pain is heard. The shout of a man who is going to die. A shout that will haunt the assassin for the rest of his life.
The victim is called Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army, leader of the soviet revolution, persecuted by Stalin and a refugee in México. The assassin is known as Jacques Mornard. His real name is Ramon Mercader del Rio. He is Spanish, an agent of the KGB, a man with a mission. A convinced communist who became a hero thanks to that crime, that wretched handing over himself. He had finally shown himself to be one of those communists ready to storm the skies.
After that crime, Ramon Mercader lived in his own hell. He knew prison and oblivion, love and kindness, contempt and admiration, solitude and exile. He lost his identity, living and dying with another man’s name. He once wrote about himself that he felt like a “hot potato”. He could never free himself from the victim’s scream.
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