The Dead Man and Being Happy

El muerto y ser feliz

A dying hitman, a stash of morphine, a car that’s seen better days – Spanish director Javier Rebollo offers a darkly humorous road movie on the possibilities of trying to escape that which you fear most.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director Javier Rebollo
  • Producer Lola Mayo, Damián Paris, José Nolla, Luís Miñarro, Verónica Cura, Alejandro Zito, Jérôme Vidal
  • Screenwriter Javier Rebollo, Lola Mayo, Salvador Roselli
  • With José Sacristán, Roxana Blanco
  • Spain-Argentina-France 2012
  • 94 mins
  • Sales Urban Distribution International

Javier Rebollo has proved one of the stand-out figures in recent Spanish filmmaking, fusing an economy of style with quirky stories of urban isolation and contemporary angst. For his third feature the action shifts to Argentina where an elderly Spaniard leaves the hospital where he is having treatment for terminal cancer and hits the road. Only this is no benign pensioner, but a professional hitman with enemies, attitude, a stash of morphine and a car that has seen better days. En route this contemporary Don Quixote picks up a squire, a Sancho Panza figure who hides her own secrets and lies, and together they travel through the dusty Argentine landscape in search of the elusive something that always seems to evade their grasp. Co-written with Lola Mayo and Las Acacias’ Salvador Roselli, Rebollo’s ingenious road movie fuses dark humour with an eye for the curious incidentals of life on the run.

Maria Delgado