Movie Releases. "Marco, the Enigma of a Life": A Necessary Biopic on Stolen Memory

First, archives, real images. The real story is on screen. Between 1940 and 1943, more than 9,000 Spaniards were interned in Nazi Germany's concentration camps. Many of them were Republicans who had fled to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Franco became Hitler's accomplice.

In the 1960s, Holocaust survivors sought to recover their memory, to confront Spain with history and its responsibilities. Enric Marco, the president of the Association of Spanish Victims of the Holocaust, made this his life's struggle. A great witness to the horror. But he was an imposter: he had never been deported. Worse, he had collaborated. Far from fighting fascism, he had enlisted as one of the 20,000 Spaniards who worked for the Third Reich as part of a 1941 agreement between Franco and Hitler.

Aitor Arregi and Jon Garano powerfully portray the lies, imposture and fall of this former leader of the Mauthausen Association, unmasked by the historian Benito Bermejo, shortly before sharing a platform at the camp of the same name with the Spanish Prime Minister of the time, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Marco is a necessary biopic and the story of a stolen memory. It was informed by interviews with Enric Marco himself, the raw material for the film's script, and the preparation of the lead actor, Eduard Fernández, who is completely unsettled. The actor watched Marco a lot, copying his body language and speech tics—a mimicry of a man as complex as he is pathetic.

Marco recounts the opacity of a man, his enigma that resists questioning. Marco also recounts his denial: he never regretted his deception, claiming to have served a duty of remembrance with his character, the memory of Hitler's Spanish victims, forgotten in the postwar years.

Marco, the Mystery of a Life by Aitor Arregi and Jon Garano, in theaters this Wednesday, May 14. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.