Events & Calendars Spanish Film Festival: "Even the Rain"

Filmmaker Sebastian (Gael García Bernal) and his cynical producer Costa (Luis Tosar) arrive in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to make a film about Columbus’s voyage to the New World and the subjugation of the indigenous population. Just as filming begins, the natives face a crisis when the government privatizes the water company and prices skyrocket. Daily protests erupt and the local man cast as a rebellious 16th-century Taino chief also becomes a leader in the water hike protests. Director Icíar Bollaín intercuts footage of Sebastian’s film with recordings of the demonstrations that occurred during the real-life “Water Wars” that took place when the Bolivian government privatized the water company in 2000. In this masterful film-within-a-film, which is anchored in the philosophies of historian Howard Zinn as well as the stories of 16th-century priests Fathers Bartolome de las Casas and Antonio Montesinos, Bollaín raises questions about exploitation in South America, blurring the lines between past and present, fiction and reality.