‘Far From the Sea’ Director Imanol Uribe Bows Buzz Title ‘What Lucia Saw, on 1989 Jesuit Priest Massacre
variety.comEd Meza @edmezavarIn his latest work, which was being singled out for praise on the first day of Malaga’s Spanish Screenings, Imanol Uribe recounts the fateful story of Lucia Cerna, the only witness to the 1989 massacre in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests and two other people by a U.S.-trained death squad at a university residence in San Salvador.“What Lucia Saw” (“Llegaron de Noche”) focuses on the story of Lucia and her husband Jorge, who, with the help of church officials and Spanish and French diplomats, are spirited out of the country to Miami, where they hope to find safe haven.
Once in the U.S., however, they fall into the clutches of the FBI and a Salvadoran colonel, who interrogate the couple in an effort to discredit Lucia’s testimony.
Uribe, a leading light of the early ’80s Basque cinema whose works also include the acclaimed 1994 terrorist drama “Numbered Days,” with Javier Bardem, and the 2015 thriller “Far From the Sea,” had long wanted to tell the story of the murdered Jesuits, in part because of his own connection to El Salvador and to the Catholic order.
The son of Basque parents, Uribe was born in El Salvador, where his father opened a shoe factory in the 1950s. The family eventually returned to Spain while Uribe was still a boy.
Read more on variety.com