10 · 07 · 08

Controversial film El desconocido screened

Clara Sánchez/Translated by Caroline MacKinnon

[imagen]Yesterday evening marked the premier of the Mexican film El desconocido directed by Rafael Piñeiro and starring Juan Acosta, Sergio Galicia and Raúl Castellanos.

Piñeiro tells the story of Diego, a teenager who lives with his depressed mother and whose father has abandoned him. At school he is bullied for being the way he is. He accepts these aggressions in silence but inside he is filled with an enormous desire to seek revenge, and little by little his personality begins to change.

After the screening, the director answered questions from the audience about the reasons why he made a film about this story. “What we just saw happens every day. I was doing research and found a document that said that people were born bad, but it is society, religion and environment that can turn them into something good. This implies that we good people create our own criminals, for this reason all of us at some point think of killing someone.”

Sergio Galicia, the actor who played Diego’s Alter Ego in the film, said “to play this character meant that we had to rehearse a lot, I am grateful to Juan that in spite of all the preparation that he needed to work on Diego, he took time to help me and practice.”

Juan, who played Diego, the character that has intense encounters with his alter ego, said “my character doesn’t have hallucinations, nor is he schizophrenic, he is just conflicted between what he lives and what he feels. He has a lot of courage but starts to become a victim to these feelings.”