The story is told by men and that is why they focus on themselves. When we talk about moles in ETA – just check it by searching on Google – this nickname of Wolf always comes up, to whom a film, more than one documentary and a few books have already been dedicated (the last one narrated by him -self and for who even attended the presentation). However, he wasn’t the only one, and he wasn’t even the one who spent the most time in the group.
It was enough to search a little, to focus on other stories and there awaited the story of Aránzazu Berradre, the false name adopted by the first woman who entered the bowels of the terrorist group. She did it when she was only 22 years old and stayed there for eight years in the 90s. A woman who sacrificed her youth for an ideal and who faced pressure, machismo in exchange for nothing, because she knew that her work would never serve her. would be publicly recognized for the nature of its work. She played a key role in dismantling Donosti’s command, and until now, few people had discovered it.
Cinema saved its history and made it a thriller which would be the feminine and feminist other side of this film about Lobo. Here Eduardo Noriega changes to Carolina Yuste, absolute protagonist of The Infiltratorthe film of which Arantxa Echevarría, director Carmen and Lola And Chinese and it will premiere this Friday. The project came as a proposal, but in the first sentence it was already there. “When I was told about the first member of the National Police who infiltrated a terrorist gang and who spent eight years, I said yes,” he remembers.
The only request was that they let her write the script: “It was candy. A thriller written by women, edited by women, produced by women, and with a protagonist who was a woman, who was not sexualized, who is not the boy’s girlfriend, nor the one who dies, nor the villain …And on top of that, capable of making a thrillerwhich is a supermasculine type… imagine, I was happy and impatient.”
Yeah The Infiltrator If it had been filmed 15 years ago it would have been directed by a man and the motivations of its protagonist would be different, although Arantxa Echevarría is more direct, if we have not known this story it is precisely because he was not a man. “It was because she was a woman. I always say, if this is a man who infiltrated for eight years, the biggest and longest infiltration known, it was already done. And certainly for a man,” he emphasizes forcefully.
Perhaps this is why, in addition to paying attention to thriller and historical context, the filmmaker creates a sort of mirror game where machismo is transversal. The protagonist experiences this within ETA, as well as in herself and her partner within the police. “In the police, they were sexist, homophobic… The very idea that it was a woman who was infiltrating was almost an insult to them. But this also happened at the ETA summit. In fact, if you look closely, apart from Yoyes, there was never a significant woman in the organization because it was also a sexist world where women were almost their servants. Those who provided alibis, cars, or information, but had no power of their own. Arantxa, the character, fights against many things, and one of them is machismo,” he emphasizes.
In the police, they were sexist, homophobic… The very idea that it was a woman who was infiltrating was almost an insult to them. But this also happened at the ETA summit.
Arantxa Echevarria
— Director
There is in The Infiltrator a theme that runs through all his films is identity. “She plays at being one or the other in a hostile and sexist space. I’m very interested in what identity is, is it given by where you come from? At 22, she doesn’t even have time to be a police officer, she pretends to be a nationalist, but she also pretends with her boss, with her superiors, with the terrorist community. Everything in his life is simulated. It was something very interesting to develop, because we all like to play impostors, but it’s pretending to be someone else. It seemed very interesting to me on all cinematographic levels,” says the director.
Terrorism has always been one of the themes that Spanish cinema has avoided tackling, although in recent years we have witnessed what is called a thaw on this subject, caused above all by the success of Country. Even comedy has already dared with examples like Faith of ETA. Despite this, for Arantxa Echevarría, the question remains “thorny”, but she believes that examples like Numbered days, Maixabel either Country “They showed that the public wants to see these stories, that they want to remember and that society is already ready to talk about a past that does not exist that long, but which is already the past, it is the historical memory.”
If it had been another moment in the fight against terrorism, it would have cost him more, but it was “the time of lead, of pain, it was the time when the assassination of Miguel Ángel Blanco had just happening and where society was in the streets.” .” He also specifies that he avoided telling a Manichean story, because “nothing is black or white and neither the police officers were all great, nor everyone in the terrorist commandos Sergio Polo [el terrorista al que da vida Diego Anido]there were many shades and many scales of gray. For this reason, they preferred to focus on their character and “not make a film that talks about the conflict”, but they hope “that many will come to talk about it”.
The Infiltrator This comes at a time when the right is taking over the group to use it politically, something that Arantxa Echevarría does not understand very well: “Politicians constantly talk about the Basque conflict, even if society has already turned the page. As soon as there is a debate, the word ETA comes up, but I believe that society is much more prepared than the political world to turn the page and think about the future. We must not forget to prevent this from happening again, but I think that society is very prepared and that it is a necessary thing, because when talking to young people, we realize that they do not have a great idea of what happened. They didn’t study it in history books. In this regard, I am happy that the film can arouse curiosity in people who knew nothing and start to investigate and learn more about what happened in the Basque Country. »
