Cinema
Águilas no cazan moscas
Sergio Cabrera · 1994
Synopsis
Vladimir Oquendo, a pupil at a military academy, hears once too often that his father is not his father. He goes back to the village to find out what happened years earlier between Oquendo the butcher and Albarracín the schoolmaster, two men of the same side whom an absurd duel of honour had set against each other, to the great delight of the mayor and the priest. Each tells a different story: the court papers, the mother, the father. The memories do not agree.
Context
The title is a proverb: eagles do not hunt flies, meaning that great men have no need to concern themselves with small matters. The film reuses a first feature by the same author, released six years earlier and unnoticed; the author kept a little more than half of its footage and shot the rest with the same actors, six years older, the children having become adolescents. The difference in grain and staging is visible from one shot to the next. The screenplay is by the actor who plays one of the two lead roles. Shot in Barichara, in Santander.
Who it is for
One hundred and ten minutes, in Spanish. A comedy built on flashbacks; having seen the film whose footage it reuses is not necessary, but it shows.
Prizes and reception
Latin American cinema prize at Sundance in 1995, Unesco gold plaque at Venice, audience prize at Huelva and at Biarritz, and half a million spectators in Colombia.