Feature film
Mataron a Venancio Flores
Juan Carlos Rodríguez Castro · 1982
Synopsis
In February 1868, in Montevideo, General Venancio Flores, leader of the Colorado Party, and former president Bernardo Berro, of the National Party, are assassinated. This double murder serves as a backdrop rather than as a plot: the film follows two enemy prisoners whom a group of government men is taking to prison, while another group sets off in pursuit, in a country torn between the two parties.
Context
Produced by the Uruguayan Cinémathèque, the film runs 91 minutes; Roberto Fontana, Rafael Salzano, Dante Alfonso and Carlos Cano are its performers. A film magazine presents it as the most anticipated feature of its time, one of the few shot in Uruguay under the dictatorship, along with El niño y la cometa (1977), El lugar del humo (1979), Gurí (1980) or Galileo Galilei (1983). The Cinémathèque, which still screens it, reads the divisions of 1868 as a metaphor for the present.
Who it is for
A historical feature film in Spanish, an hour and a half long, on the party wars of nineteenth-century Uruguay.
Prizes and reception
The most anticipated of the Uruguayan feature films of its time, according to Revista Film; the Cinémathèque still screens it.