Alessandro Borghi will be the co-star of The Prisoner (El Cautivo), the new film by Chilean Oscar winner Alejandro Amenabar focusing on the true story of the writer Miguel de Cervantes.
The actor, increasingly launched internationally also by the success of the film The Eight Mountains and awaiting Supersex on Rocco Siffredi, will play Hasan, the Lord of Algiers who imprisoned Miguel de Cervantes, played by Julio Peña (seen on Netflix in the very recent Berlin), the Italian co-producer Marina Marzotto of Propaganda Italia confirmed to ANSA.
The first take of the project which will be shown at the European Film Market in Berlin, writes Variety, will be in April.
The film focuses on the origins of the poetics of the author of Don Quixote.
At the age of 28, Cervantes was taken prisoner by the Moors in Algiers, resulting in his creative birth.
The $15 million production will be filmed in Spain, between Valencia, Alicante and Seville.
The film is set in Algiers in 1575 when Cervantes, a wounded twenty-eight-year-old soldier of the Spanish navy, is held prisoner by Ottoman corsairs.
A cruel death awaits him if his countrymen do not soon pay his ransom;
but within the confines of his cell, Cervantes discovers a surprising refuge: the art of storytelling.
Amenábar (Mare Inside and The Others) said: "I will play with the contrasts between the dark reality that Miguel de Cervantes lived and the power of fabulation, between the epic escape attempts and the miseries of imprisonment, between the cruelty of his captors and the paradise of the hammam and the joy of the streets of Algiers.
Miguel de Cervantes experienced all of this, and it is precisely this that influenced the humanism and complexity of his work. It is known that at the time he was already writing, and one of His stories in Don Quixote, called "The Prisoner", contain numerous autobiographical references. Miguel de Cervantes left a great story untold: his."
“Crafted with resilience and hope, his stories captivate his fellow prisoners and capture the attention of Hasan, the enigmatic and feared Bey of Algiers, igniting a secret affinity between captor and prisoner,” the synopsis reads.
“Suspicions grow amid growing tensions in the city, and Cervantes, driven by an unshakable sense of optimism, hatches a bold plan for freedom.”
In the technical cast there are costumes by Nicoletta Taranta ("A Chiara", "L'isola delle rose").
The film is produced by Fernando Bovaira for Mod Producciones with Himenóptero and Misent Producciones in co-production with Propaganda Italia ("Monica", "Piove") by Marina Marzotto and Mattia Oddone with the participation of Netflix and TVE.
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