Lola, a novelist who has abandoned her writing career, tracks down the details of a true story from the last days of the Spanish Civil War. The writer and Falangist honcho Rafael Sánchez Mazas faced a firing squad along with fifty other prisoners, but managed to escape into the woods. A Republican soldier, apparently one of those searching the area for the escaped prisoner, found him but allowed him to escape. The novelist pieces together the fragments of the story, plagued by contradictions and mysterious characters, and comes to realize that her search for the truth is a personal quest of self-discovery.
An adaptation of the 2001 novel Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, the screenplay was penned by Trueba.[4] In the transfer from novel to film, the character of Javier Cercas becomes Lola Cercas (changing the gender of the lead character) and Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño is replaced by Gastón Elquiza, a Mexican university student with a family background of exiles of the Spanish civil war.[5] The film is a Lolafilms and Fernando Trueba PC production.[2] Shooting locations included Girona, Catalonia.[6]
