Release Date: 01/06/2017

Spanish actress Macarena Granada returns home to Spain in the mid-1950s having enjoyed a successful career in Hollywood. She is to play Queen Isabella the First of Castille in a prestigious period drama. At the studio she meets her former friends and colleagues, falls in love with a handsome crew member, leads a madcap expedition to free a resistance fighter and proves herself to be truly regal during an encounter with the fascist leader Franco, whom she despises.

Oscar®-winning director Fernando Trueba’s new film-within-a-film comedy returns to the same territory as La niña de tus ojos (The Girl of Your Dreams) which screened in Competition at the 1999 Berlinale. This time the story is set during Franco’s dictatorship and portrays both sympathisers of the regime and those who were persecuted by it. The effect that Franco’s rule had on the arts is a topic which pervades the work of this doyen of Spanish cinema. In his current film he displays a lightness of touch and adopts an amusing, chaotic approach that is no less political.

The film marks Trueba’s third collaboration with his ‘queen’ Penélope Cruz, who shot to fame in his 1992 work Belle Epoque.