Filmmaker Gabriel Lichtmann embarks in the making of a film about Laila Salama's life. Through a series of interviews with curious characters, he manages to assemble the puzzle pieces, uncovering a secret which remained hidden for years.
Laila Salama is a mystery. Daughter of an MI6 spy, a Miss Teen Beauty, Rommel's lover, Wiesenthal's informant, she took part in the operation to capture Adolf Eichmann in Argentina - There's even a film about her and a tango composed in her honor. Laila Salama was also Silvia Céspedes, the perfect wife and mother. A heroine denied by the official history records. Filmmaker Gabriel Lichtmann embarks in the making of a film about Laila's life. Through a series of interviews with curious characters, he manages to assemble the puzzle pieces, uncovering a secret which remained hidden for years.
Believe it or not, dear reader, this is not a movie about myself nor is Hector Díaz my Alter Ego. The fact that his character shares my name is a script decision. He is an actor playing a film director who bumps into a mysterious heroine, becomes obsessed with her story, and along the way comes across a gallery of characters who give him the pieces necessary to assemble her life's puzzle. But he is nothing more than a narrator. The real protagonist is her, Laila Salama, the beauty queen, the one who fell in love with Römmel, the one who married a violinist from the Pugliese orchestra and had a child with him, the one who was Isser Harel's informant on the Eichmann case. The heroine, the myth. That is The Red Star, a spy movie, a fiction about a documentary, a story built with elements from History with a capital H. It's an attempt to create a myth, the tale of the fabulous deeds of a prodigious character.
Reality overwhelms me and that's why I wanted to create a myth, and in order to make it believable I used resources from spy movies and documentaries. I believe cinema needs to be epic again. I defend the value of strong narratives, because I think they have the capacity of taking the audience on a trip from which they return transformed, able to see life with different eyes, far away from alienation and routine. I believe cinema is an adventure, both to its creator and the one watching it. The Red Star is all of these things: beauty, adventures, stories, History.
Gabriel Lichtmann
