The date of 8th September 1975 saw the premiere at Madrid’s Cine Amaya of Furtivos / Poachers, considered today to be José Luis Borau’s greatest work, following a rather bumpy start despite which it went on to become a classic of Spanish cinema. Now, 50 years down the line, the Málaga and San Sebastian festivals, together with the Basque Film Archive, join hands to honour the film on its anniversary. Furtivos will receive the Película de Oro tribute at the 28th Malaga Festival, to run from 14-23 March, before opening the Klasikoak section at the coming edition of the San Sebastian Festival. The screening will feature a copy restored by Video Mercury Films / FlixOlé, in a tribute rounded off with a book published by Málaga Festival, the Filmoteca Española and Dama, in collaboration with Caimán Cuadernos de Cine and the San Sebastian Festival.

Directed and written by José Luis Borau, in collaboration with Manuel Gutiérrez Aragon, Furtivos stars Ovidi Montllor, Lola Gaos and Alicia Sánchez. The plot follows the story of Ángel, a poacher who lives in the woods with his ruthless and violent mother, Martina. On one of his rare forays into the city, he meets Milagros, a young woman on the run from a remand home and sweetheart of a well-known criminal. Ángel takes the girl under his wing and brings her home with him. His mother’s animosity towards Milagros and Ángel’s obsession with the young woman, together with the claustrophobic atmosphere of the relationship between all three, eventually comes to a head with dramatic consequences. 

The screening of Furtivos came with so many conditioning factors dictated by the Francoist authorities that it was rejected by the Cannes and Berlin festivals. It received a warmer reception in San Sebastian, starting point for its widespread critical and commercial acclaim, bagging the Golden Shell for Best Film and the Perla del Cantábrico Award for Best Film in the Spanish Language. It also earned recognition from the Circle of Film Writers Awards, the Silver Fotogramas and the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival.

Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi presenting the Golden Shell Award to the director José Luis Borau, for the film "Furtivos" (1975) San Sebastian Festival Archive  [+]

This new print of the film in 4K, which will be screened in Malaga and San Sebastian, has been made by distributor Video Mercury Films in collaboration with the FlixOlé platform. The restoration process used the original 35mm negative and was supervised by the director and film’s co-screenwriter, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón.

Carlos F. Heredero’s book, Furtivos. 50 años (Poachers. 50 years), takes a look back at the film to document the first reliable inside history of this highly unusual project: the timeline, the figures, the roles, the writing of the script, the production plan, the money, the contracts, the locations, the goings-on while filming, the censorship minutes, the conversations with festivals, the distribution, the box office, its international circulation, the controversies and the threats, etc.

The x-ray brings new angles placing the movie in the social, political and cultural context of its birth, immersed in the criminal death throes of Franco’s dictatorship and the struggles brewing up for the Transition to democracy.

In turn, the analysis of its images – heirs of Buñuel and Goya, of Gutiérrez Solana’s brutal Castile and Cela’s shocking realism – helps us to understand the complicated nature of its discourse and of its forms. A never-seen-before interview with Borau on the subject of the film complete the research.