\n\tAt the center of the story is Juan Faura, played by an impressive Iv\u00e1n Pellicer, a disillusioned and heartbroken young man apparently eager to die in combat. The character epitomizes what Herrero says were many of the young volunteers who joined the Legion.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-variety-2020\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tSpanish Legionnaires ready for battle in \u2018Carte Blanche.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tManolo Pav\u00f3n\/Latido Films<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe majority of people who joined the Legion were running away from something \u2013 perhaps they had committed a crime or had some secret they wanted to hide \u2013 and the Legion offered them a kind of impunity that simply doesn\u2019t exist today. But there was another segment of people there, and this applies to Iv\u00e1n Pellicer\u2019s character, Faura. He is there because, deep down, he wants to die. Why does he want to die? Because of heartbreak, romantic disillusionment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAppearing in key scenes that provide the greater context of the war\u2019s eventual consequences for Spain are Jos\u00e9 Mill\u00e1n-Astray (Mon Ceballos) and Francisco Franco (Manuel Pico), close allies and the brutal commanders who established the Spanish Legion in 1920 and who granted their Legionnaires a free hand, or carte blanche, to deal brutally with local inhabitants and resistant fighters alike. <\/p>\n
\n\tBolstered by his military campaign in Morocco, Franco went on to lead Nationalist forces to victory in the Spanish Civil War, followed by a near 40-year rule as dictator.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe Rif War \u2013 that remains a story untold,\u201d Herrero tells Variety. \u201cVisually speaking, the only existing cinematic depiction is a Francoist-era, black-and-white film made ages ago.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhether you call it the Rif War, the African War or the Moroccan War \u2013 it goes by many names \u2013 it strikes me as the most significant historical event in the history of Spain after the Civil War.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIn fact, the Civil War contains an element that stems directly from the war in Morocco,\u201d Herrero stresses.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe war initially marked a massive defeat for the Spanish army,\u201d he explains. Nevertheless, the war allowed Franco and the Legion \u201cto gain a level of prominence they wouldn\u2019t have achieved had the Rif War never taken place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHad Franco not served as the head of the Legion, he might not have possessed the capacity to place himself at the forefront of the rebellion \u2014 for that is precisely what Franco did: launch a rebellion against the democratically elected government of the Republic. He managed to invade Spain using the Spanish army stationed in Africa, bolstered by the Moorish troops he was able to mobilize to fight in the Civil War. Had the Legion not existed, perhaps none of this would have happened, and perhaps the Civil War would not have ended the way it did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn making \u201cCarte Blanche,\u201d Herrero re-teamed with Silva, a friend and colleague with whom he worked on two previous films. Herrero originally agreed to produce the film adaptation of Silva\u2019s award-winning 2004 novel with another director already attached. The plans, however, were complicated by the project\u2019s ambitious scope.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe director wanted to shoot it with a much larger budget than what we could realistically secure in Spain for a film like this. So, at a certain point, the project stalled completely; it ground to a halt because we needed to raise a level of funding that simply isn\u2019t available in Spain for a standard Spanish feature film.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u2018When it became clear that the project wasn\u2019t going to happen otherwise, the other producer said to me: \u2018Gerardo, the only director I know who is capable of pulling off this film with the budget we have available is you.\u2019 I replied, \u2018Thanks for the compliment, but\u2026 I don\u2019t know. Let me think about it.\u2019 And well, some time passed, and since I realized that the film would simply fall by the wayside and never get made if I didn\u2019t step in, I decided to accept the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAs originally written, the film was economically unfeasible, Herrero points out. \u201cIt called for a depiction of the Battle of Badajoz \u2014 something that would have been virtually impossible to stage. To pull that off, that single sequence alone would have required a budget of several million euros.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHerrero was able to adapt the script to fit an ideal location he discovered that would serve as the setting for the key opening and closing scenes \u2014 an abandoned mine in Granada that was near Almer\u00eda.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI was keen to shoot the entire film in the Almer\u00eda desert \u2014 a region I know intimately, having filmed several movies there many years ago \u2014 and I realized that I could easily shoot the rest of the film\u2019s sequences there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf you structure a film in a way that keeps everything geographically close together, it is much more manageable from a budgetary standpoint than having to shoot in a multitude of different locations,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the end, he was able to make the film for an impressive \u20ac4 million ($4.65 million), including advertising.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt was a very complex undertaking to secure everything, specifically the combat vehicles needed for the opening and closing sequences, as well as the Legionnaires. Moreover, the army provided absolutely no cooperation whatsoever; I assume this is because the whole subject of the Civil War still touches too many raw nerves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe production was able to source vintage combat vehicles from private collectors.<\/p>\n
\n\tHerrero also sought to use practical effects throughout the film, including gunfire and explosions, often enhanced with visual effects.<\/p>\n
\n\tShot over six and a half weeks in August and September of last year, most of it in the Almer\u00eda desert, the film also proved quite a test for cast and crew alike, with temperatures ranging from 35 to 38 degrees Celsius (95-100 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI actually chose to shoot it in the summer so that the actors would truly experience the intense heat found in Africa. With all that heat, the actors were sweating for real.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIndeed, with all the marching, running and hiking they had to do, the actors wore sturdy military boots \u2013 something that may irk some sticklers for historic accuracy, Herrero notes.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere might be some critics who claim that the footwear the soldiers wore in reality was inferior to what they have in the movie. But that specific footwear was chosen deliberately because I couldn\u2019t risk an actor twisting an ankle and being unable to continue filming.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf I had put them in alpargatas [also known as espadrilles], which is what many of them actually wore back then, the chances of an actor getting injured and being unable to continue shooting would be extremely high. When you have to repeat a scene seven times \u2014 where you have to throw yourself to the ground and drag yourself along \u2014 you simply cannot risk someone breaking an ankle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cCarte Blanche\u201d is produced by Herrero\u2019s Madrid-based Tornasol Media and sold internationally by Latido Films<\/a>, which is presenting it at Cannes\u2019 March\u00e9 du Film<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cCarte Blanche\u201d is a harrowing thriller that explores Spain\u2019s seemingly forgotten Rif War in Morocco, the innate dehumanization…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[118697,121135,121136,121137,165],"class_list":{"0":"post-238002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-morocco","8":"tag-cannes-film-festival","9":"tag-gerardo-herrero","10":"tag-latido-films","11":"tag-marchu00e9-du-film","12":"tag-morocco"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@africa\/116584726204346610","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}