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PRODUCTION / FUNDING Spain

Los renglones torcidos de Dios nears the end of post-production

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- Oriol Paulo’s new outing is a film adaptation of the novel by Torcuato Luca de Tena, toplined by Bárbara Lennie as a woman who wangles her way into a psychiatric hospital

Los renglones torcidos de Dios nears the end of post-production
Actress Bárbara Lennie and director Oriol Paulo during the shoot for Los renglones torcidos de Dios

Last summer, Oriol Paulo (The Body [+see also:
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]
, Mirage [+see also:
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]
) spent nine weeks in Tarragona and Barcelona filming an adaptation of one of the most well-known novels in Spanish literature: Los renglones torcidos de Dios (lit. “God’s Twisted Lines”), which was published in 1979 by Torcuato Luca de Tena. The filmmaker is once again banking on actress Bárbara Lennie as his protagonist (after he did likewise for The Invisible Guest [+see also:
trailer
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]
, which was a box-office smash in China, where it grossed €25 million, whereas in Spain it only raked in €3.6 million; it even got an Italian remake, entitled The Invisible Witness [+see also:
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]
, helmed by Stefano Mordini). She steps into the shoes of the enigmatic Alice Gould, while Eduard Fernández plays Samuel Alvar, the head of the sanatorium that she wangles her way into.

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The cast of the film, which is currently having the finishing touches put to its editing and post-production, is rounded off by well-known faces such as Loreto Mauleón (the winner of a Platino Award for her magnificent and unforgettable supporting appearance in the series Patria [+see also:
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]
), Javier Beltrán (The Laws of the Border [+see also:
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]
), Pablo Derqui (seen recently in Dos [+see also:
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]
), Fede Aguado (The Plague [+see also:
interview: Alberto Rodríguez and Rafae…
series profile
]
) and Adelfa Calvo (seen earlier this year in Parallel Mothers [+see also:
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making of
film profile
]
).

The story introduces us to Alice, a private investigator who bluffs her way into a psychiatric hospital by feigning paranoia. In this way, she hopes to be able to gather evidence for the case she is working on: the death of an inmate in murky circumstances. However, the reality she is confronted with during her stay will exceed her expectations and will cause her to doubt her own sanity, because an unknown, thrilling world will open up before her very eyes, and the course of events will transform her from a detective into a suspect in a treasure hunt, in which nothing is as it seems.

The screenplay for the movie was penned by Oriol together with playwright and screenwriter Guillem Clua, winner of the 2020 National Drama Literature Award: they have thus teamed up again after having co-written the miniseries The Innocent. In the words of the Catalonian director, “Los renglones torcidos de Dios has, without a doubt, been my most exciting and brutal shoot to date: a journey out of my comfort zone. And to be able to work with this cast headed up by Bárbara and Eduard has been a gift.”

In terms of the film’s production process, one particular challenge worth highlighting was the task of simulating a sanatorium from the 1970s, inside which the team would be able to shoot freely. And so a 3,800 m2 set was built within the defunct Mercedes factory in Barcelona, which entailed more than 8,600 hours of construction work.

Los renglones torcidos de Dios is a production by Nostromo PicturesAtresmedia Cine and Filmayer. Warner Bros Pictures Spain will be in charge of distributing the film in Spanish theatres, most likely in autumn 2022.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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