The film
Hasta el cielo
(2020) followed the rise and fall of a young criminal involved in a love triangle between his wife, the daughter of a criminal boss, and another woman with whom he falls in love.
Hasta el cielo: The series
(premiered on Friday, March 17 on Netflix) begins by gutting the film to those who did not see it: things did not end well for two of the components of that trio.
The survivor is the protagonist of the series that continues that story, recovers her characters, expands her universe and continues with her own portrait of the criminal world of Madrid in the 21st century.
Although film and series are closely linked, those responsible have worked on the second with the intention that those who did not see the first can also get hooked.
“We had a very broad universe, with many characters and many stories, and in the film we had to stick to a triangle between three characters, a very powerful love story in that environment, but there was no space to enjoy and develop all the elements. characters that there were”, explains Jorge Guerricaechevarría, screenwriter and co-creator of
Hasta el cielo.
Sitting next to him in a Madrid hotel on March 6, director Daniel Calparsoro continues: “In the film we had to leave out a character, the infiltrator, who we wanted to include but there was no room.
We wanted to capture who these people are, that they are not mindless who hit four
sticks
and that's it, there is a tradition, they come from the butroneros, who come from the old mercheros.
They are people who live to steal and live by stealing, structured organizations, with lawyers, who study the law... In the film it is not so present because it has such a youthful aspect, but the series gave the possibility of showing that”.
More information
Carlos Boyero's review of the film 'Hasta el cielo': "Good entertainment and a memorable actress"
For its creators,
Hasta el cielo
shows the evolution of the underworld that Spanish cinema already embodied in
El Lute: Camina o reventa
(1987) or the quinqui cinema of the 1970s and 1980s.
“This is what has happened with these people, who have gone from the shacks to the shantytowns that were built at the end of the Franco regime, with their own codes that have been maintained and have changed at the same time.
They function differently, they have a different way of moving, they are not conditioned by drugs, they are not heroin addicts... And it mixes with the world of social networks, where you see the sneakers or the watch that Ronaldo is wearing and if they are in a shop window, I ram myself against him and I take them and 20 more”, says Guerricaechevarría.
Álvaro Rico and Asia Ortega, in the first chapter of 'Hasta el cielo: La serie'.JAIME OLMEDO/NETFLIX
Opposite the male protagonist of the film (Miguel Herrán), the crowded cast of the series is headed by a woman, Sole, played by Asia Ortega.
Her ambition is to achieve her emancipation, take down her own criminal gang outside the shelter of her father (Luis Tosar) and prove that she can stand on her own.
But neither the police, nor her own trusted lawyer, nor her father, nor a police infiltrator (with whom she, to make matters worse, begins a relationship) will make it easy for her.
“It is the story of maturation, a person who breaks the shell and grows.
In her maturing process, instead of falling into revenge or rage, she comes to a point of understanding.
She has a lot of emotional intelligence, ”says Calparsoro about her leading lady.
The enormous documentation work carried out by the director and screenwriter to prepare the film, with contacts both within the criminal world and in the police in Madrid and Ibiza, helped them to give a very real background to their story.
Some characters, such as the protagonist of the series or the infiltrator played by Álvaro Rico, are inspired by real people.
“There are women who could be compared to our protagonist, not exactly in the world of the aluniceros, but in the underworld, with a lot of power,” says Guerricaechevarría.
All the robberies that appear in
Up to the sky
are based on real hits.
Even some that went wrong in reality come to fruition here.
The screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría and the director Daniel Calparsoro, creators of 'Hasta el cielo.
The series'.Claudio Álvarez
For the series, the creators set out to update their information and document themselves with the news that have occurred in robberies.
“Now they are more sophisticated robberies, with aspects that have to do with alarms, controlling the guard to get the key…”, describes the scriptwriter.
His research also served to give realism to the characters and stories.
“Talking to people who are in similar situations gives a lot of peace of mind when writing the script because you are basing yourself on something, you are not going to a stereotype or copying American films that you have already seen”, he continues.
Beyond the filming of the action scenes, both creators acknowledge that the difficulty of the series lay in the script and the multiple plots it maintains.
“We wanted it to be similar to the film in that there was a balance between the action and the characters, so that the first didn't eat away at the second,” says the writer.
Thus, the story not only shows spectacular blows of all kinds, it also has space for dialogues between father and daughter or to delve into the secondary characters.
Luis Tosar and Asia Ortega, in the second episode of 'Hasta el cielo: La serie'.JAIME OLMEDO/NETFLIX
Film and television
Both Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Daniel Calparsoro are common names in Spanish cinema who have had a significant presence on television lately.
In the last three years, in addition to
Hasta el cielo: La serie,
Guerricaechevarría has written and produced
30 Coins
and signed the script for
Desaparecidos
.
Calparsoro has directed
Operation Black Tide
and previously participated in
Todo por el juego
and
Apaches
, among others.
“Now it happens a lot that you present a story and they tell you: 'couldn't this be a series?', acknowledges Guerricaechevarría.
“Sometimes you wonder if it's worth the effort to make something for the cinema when the most widely used display platform is a television, an iPad or even a phone”, Calparsoro reflects on the present and future of cinema in theaters.
“Now especially event films work, and we in Spanish cinema do not have the capacity to make many event films”, continues Guerricaechevarría.
“The mid-range of cinema is going to the platforms.
But some very small films have emerged, many of them directed by women, thanks to the support that is being given to female directors, from which wonderful films are coming out that would not have come out five or 10 years ago because very few would have bet on them.
And that is also good and it is cinema.
I think the cinema will continue to function, it will continue to reformat.
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