• Director(s):

    BERNSTEIN (CATHERINE)

  • Producer(s):

    SOLENT, MINIMAL FILMS

  • Territories:

    Worldwide (except Spain).

  • Production year:

    2025

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French

  • Rights:

    TV, DVD, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET, VOD

Enric Marco, famous in Spain as a civil war fighter, anti-Franco activist and death camp survivor, lied for 40 years. His deception was exposed on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camps on May 8, 2005. Catalan writer Javier Cercas uses this resounding story as the basis for his intriguing investigation The Impostor, which examines the role of testimony and fiction in history. 

Enric Marco is one of the impostors who claimed to have lived through the deportation, like Jerzy Kosinski and Micha Defonseca and many others. In Spain, his lie has become a major social issue, shaking up a country where the memory of the Second World War is often obscured. Catalan writer Javier Cercas, despite his repugnance for Marco, takes up this story asking three questions: Why did Marco lie? Why did people believe him? Why does Marco’s case trouble him so much? For nine years, Cercas carried out an in-depth investigation, interviewing Marco and other protagonists, collecting documents to get to the truth. Director Catherine Bernstein uses this previously unpublished material to question Cercas on the creative process of his work and the concept of truth and falsity it addresses, ten years after the novel was published and two years after Marco died.