Keswick Film Club - Marshland

Synopsis

Juan and Pedro are two mismatched cops searching for two teenage girls who have disappeared in a remote part of Andalusia. It is post-Franco Spain and the lingering Fascist sympathies of the area are not helping their investigation. The locals don’t seem to want to know, preferring to think the girls have just run off rather than accepting anything more sinister can have hap-pened to them.

"The script uses the thriller format to lock together the personal, the social and the political in what adds up to not only a darkly ambiguous thriller but a portrait of an isolated community, and a whole society, in flux: a marshland" - Jonathan Holland, Hollywood Reporter.

If you, like me, enjoy film noir and crave the days when thrillers were full of clever scripts and false endings, then this one is for you.

"Aware that we’ve seen this story before – the buddy-cops-hunt-a-rural-killer plotline isn't exactly new – director Alberto Rodríguez crams the film with red herrings, dead leads, oddball supporting characters and murky political subtext. He leads us out into the wilds and back again, throwing in the odd fist fight and car chase to keep things ticking along. The result is a taut, visually sumptuous and hugely entertaining thriller" - Tom Huddleston, Time Out