Eroski Paradise
Antonio and Eva met at the nightclub “Paraíso” (“Paradise”) in 1989. That night, Eva got pregnant and, after a few months, they married and had Alejandra. In 2019 Alejandra has grown up and become a promising filmmaker returning home to shoot a documentary film about her parents. But Antonio and Eva are now divorced, they haven’t seen each other for years, and the old nightclub where they met has been transformed into an Eroski supermarket.
Eroski Paradise is a film that contains a theatre play that contains a film. The Chévere group, whom I have admired since I arrived in Santiago back in the early 90s, decided to go on this strange adventure of making a theatre play that features the shooting of a documentary film, shortly after receiving the National Theatre Award. And after many years making great theatre plays — funny, irreverent, sharp plays —, they reached an incredibly high level of creative maturity that exploded with this Eroski Paradise. And they achieved something that I really appreciate, which is the ability to tell something very big through a very small story.
A broken marriage and the daughter they brought up together is the main focus of this story. A story that talks about uprooting, emigration, the tragedies produced by drugs in the coastal areas, broken loves, the loss of innocence… in short, the story of Galicia in the last decades or, what is the same, the story of many of us, because we all have our wounds and we all have our own “Paraíso” (“Paradise”). That is why it was such a pleasure to make a film out of this story. It was a gift and an opportunity to, without hiding its theatrical origin, explore the relationship between two languages as close and as different as theatre and cinema.
Awards
Two award-winning
performances.
Film adaptation of Chévere's play, National Theater Award.
- Best Leading ActressMestre Mateo Awards · Patricia de Lorenzo
- Best Leading ActorMestre Mateo Awards · Miguel de Lira
