My greatest gift: the need to make a better
world
La Nacion
By Adolfo C. Martinez
November 29, 2018
Our opinion: good
A director is besieged by his actors and his
technicians when filming the final scene of his western. Everyone wonders
if the one who must die is the bad or the good one in history, and in the face
of this dilemma, he will travel through a series of countries in which,
perhaps, he finds the answer so desired. Inhabitants of France, Mexico,
Ireland, Colombia and Rwanda are telling you their
hardships and so you will know what to do. This atypical film speaks,
between the document and the fiction, of the problems that the inhabitants of
many countries are going through. The Spanish director Juan Manuel Cotelo,
here also an actor, summed up the need for human beings to understand each
other to build a better world.
El Tiempo
January 5, 2019
After its success in Spain
and with distribution in 14 countries including Mexico
and Spain,
the film “The greatest gift”, the Spanish filmmaker Juan Manuel Cotelo, allows
us to verify that the theme of forgiveness attracts anyone and that the public
is also eager for positive stories
The film is about forgiveness, a weapon capable of ending
any conflict and has already been used in France,
Spain, Ireland, Mexico,
Colombia, Rwanda and, in the words of its
director, it works, always.
In an interview with Notimex, Juan Manuel Cotelo pointed out
that “The greatest gift” arose from a meeting that he did not expect in Bogotá, Colombia,
where after a colloquium at the end of some screening a great person approached
him and literally said: “My bosses They want to apologize, they would like to
do it through you. ”
The bosses of this character were in jail and had committed
all kinds of evils and murders in the context of the drug war in that country.
“He told me how those people, about 850, surrendered,
without being captured by the police or the Army, in a single day and one of
the requests they made to the Colombian government was to get out of jail to
apologize to their victims one by one. one, face to face, ”he explained.
Cotelo visited them in jail and then accompanied them in
these meetings with their victims.
"What I experienced was so powerful, so surprising, so
beautiful, that I really didn't have to think too much, and I told myself, this
I have to tell you, from what came the project of my film," he said.
When concluding that it was necessary to think about
resentment in all its facets, the film contains testimonies in France, Ireland,
Rwanda, Mexico and Spain.
It is also a combination of fiction and reality, because all
the characters are true.
“I did it to get the best out of everything because in
reality there is no actor in the world that is able to replace a person who
speaks with the heart of what he has lived and if he had put the best actor for
each case, he would not reach never the real character, ”he noted.
"He stressed that" for me the documentary is
infinitely more powerful than fiction, but fiction for me is a wonderful
instrument of reflection, like a fable, we read a fable and see that the
protagonist is the fox and the bird, the hare and the cat, but that fiction can
lead me to think that I am that cat or I am that hare, ”he added.
In "The greatest gift" there is also a lot of
humor, "because I like humor that not only makes me laugh but makes me
think, so when I made the movie I tried to combine everything, reality with
fiction, humor with the drama, as in fact happens in life itself ”.
After the success he has had in Spain and its distribution in
several countries, Cotelo said that the issue of forgiveness is attractive to
many people and also positive stories.
“The world is better with forgiveness, sometimes we don't
talk about it, I think it's understandable that sometimes we put all the focus,
all the energy, all the time, even the money into telling stories of someone
who has hurt another, Call yourself lies, robberies, corruption or violence,
”he said.
However, "when someone forgives someone, when someone
repents, a new story begins," he added.
On the Mexican testimony, Cotelo indicated that someone told
him about a marriage in Mexico
that had been broken for five years and that it seemed clearly irreconcilable.
"Nobody bet a penny for the reconciliation of that
marriage and it happened, I can not tell how it happened because you have to
watch the movie, but today that it seems that any discussion with a person even
if it is small means breaking forever and is not so" , he claimed.
"You can regain peace as
it has been lost, the last word is not hateful," he concluded.
El mayor regalo – Spanish title
The Greatest Gift – English title
A 2019 Spanish documentary production [Fireworkers A.I.E. (Madrid)]
Producer: Simona Puscas
Director: Juan Manuel Cotelo
Story: Juan Manuel Cotelo, Alexis Martínez
Screenplay: Juan Manuel Cotelo, Alexis
Martínez
Cinematography: Alexis Martinez
Music:
Running time: 107 minutes
Story: A Spanish film director finds himself tired of the
stereotypical western movie endings based on revenge so for his movie his
decides to take an unusual turn, therefore he goes around the world looking for
new ideas on how to end his western movie. He finds victims of terrorist
attacks, genocides and much more who have learned to forgive
Cast:
Will – Santi Rodriguez
Young Tim Guenard – Daniel Ruizar
Tim Friend - Joe Gómez
Jack - Carlos Aguillo
Director - Juan Manuel Cotelo
Sheriff - Paco Estellés
Periodista - Carlos Chamarro
Vaquero - Jorge García
Guerrero
Producer - Inés Sájara
With: Charo Gabella, Saskia
Guanche, Alejandro Navarro
