The Spanish series ‘El Hijo Zurdo’, premiered this Tuesday in Cannes, competes for the best short series award at the Canneseries, the international television awards held in the coastal town of France.
The Sevillian Rafael Cobos debuts as a director with this six-episode miniseries, for which he has also written the script, which tells the story of a mother discovering that her son has joined a neo-Nazi group. The task is shared with Paco R. Baños.
“It was time” the Andalusian assured Efe, “I wanted to see what it was like to direct, among other things because it enriches me as a writer and allows me to see how complex it is, after the writing process, to embody it (the text) and pass to another phase,” he adds.
Set in a Seville “where people live”, that is, away from its tourist parts, the story is an adaptation of the homonymous book by Rosario Izquierdo, published in October 2019, although Cobos admits that “it is a fairly free adaptation”. that maintains the spirit of the work but with a story built “ex-professedly for the series”.
“It speaks to how lost a lot of teens are and how easy it is for them to put their intentions in sometimes the wrong places. But the heart of the series is in the relationship between the mother and the son and where this communication breaks down, where the communication between mother and son is perverted and above all, how it becomes a kind of irresolvable monster, whether linked to the extreme right or to any other type of escape route”, explains Cobos.
A 22-minute first episode, ‘Tal Astilla’, premiered this morning in Cannes and features Lola Izquierdo (María León), a Sevillian mother who goes to a police station at dawn after discovering that her son, Lorenzo (Hugo Welzel), has been arrested for beating up a boy of Moroccan origin.
“It has nothing to do with what I’ve done so far as an actress,” says León, “for me it has been a gift to be able to be inside Lola’s body, accompany her and discover everything she discovers.”
Produced by Movistar + in collaboration with Atípica Films, “The Left-Handed Son & rdquor; is the only Spanish creation this year at the festival and will compete on Wednesday for the award for best short series with nine others, including “Se Busca”, by Argentine Mariano Pozzi, about babies stolen during the 1976 military dictatorship.
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Among the jury are Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, the couple known as “Los Javis”, who continue their career as judges this time in Cannes.
‘El Hijo Zurdo’ will premiere on April 27 on the Movistar + platform.
