Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, France (2007)
Director: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
Cast: Paz Vega, Ángela Molina, Moritz Bleibtreu

The Lark Farm has opened this year the European Seville Film Festival. This co-production directed by Taviani brothers has among its cast two Spanish actresses: Paz Vega (the main character in the film) and Ángela Molina.
La_masseria_delle_Allondole__3_.jpg Set in Turkey in the year 1915, the film has a historic plot, but with a current look, as it tells a story which, unfortunately, seems forced to be repeated. The central axis of the film is the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turkish people. The parallel story, as it will happen in other films of the festival, is the love (the audience will have to choose which of both stories is the main one and which one the secondary). This is the first time in which a foreign director tells the story of this genocide and, as Taviani brothers assert, the Turkish Government pressured them for the film not to come into light. For this reason the film had to be shot in Bulgaria, a co-producer country. As Paolo Taviani said in an interview for the Spanish newspaper El País, “Turkey wants to come into the European Union. We don´t try to interfere in the matters of other states. However, we, as members of the EU, must ask them to recognize the Armenian genocide”.
Both directors assert that, beyond the opinion of the audience, they feel very proud of the film, since the Republic of Armenia has awarded a price for showing the “suffering” of this people.
The film tries to show, in the middle of the cruelty, the ray of hope that there is in people ready to break the rules, in love, in madness, in goodness, and occasionally, in the horrible fear, which makes people make whatever in order to save their lives or the lives of their families, although this means to hurt their own friends. For that reason, the feeling of guilt and remorse are two of the feeling that appear in this story.
A note against the film: the actors overact; sometimes it seems more a theater performance than a film. Especially, the role that plays the wife of the colonel is comical, when it should be dramatic.

Sara Domínguez Martín
Translated by: Antonio Martínez Pérez