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"Probably the most enduring of the Barcelona School films. Influenced by science fiction and the new consumer society, Fata Morgana is a formal tour de force, and the enigma of its futurist dystopia stands out as a glittering exception amid the grim realism dominant in Spanish art-house film of the time." – The Independent
Located somewhere between Luis Buñuel, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jess Franco, the second feature from The Blood-Splattered Bride director Vicente Aranda (Libertarias, MIFF 1997) is a strange masterwork of both the Escuela de Barcelona and early giallo cinema.
In a chillingly empty city (Barcelona, standing in for the dystopian near future), vacated by its residents under a spell of collective nuclear fear, a homicidal killer is on the loose. With the police baffled by the crimes and a resident professor puzzling over murders he believes to be destiny, only a beautiful fashion model (60s Spanish star Teresa Gimpera) is aware of the peril she faces.
The rare film in which a woman kills two men with a fish, Fata Morgana, or Left-Handed Fate, mixes avant-garde surrealism with innovative pop-art eclecticism, Aranda serving up a fascinating thriller that trips into the psychology of the victim/killer dynamic; just as some are born to kill, are there those that are born to die?
"The film's cool aesthetic owes much to the ‘60s pop-art-meets-Cold-War world of comic books, advertising and fashion." – Fashion in Film
