Your dad's a cop, your friends are dead, and the needle calls your name. 1980s Spain hits different.
Paco, the teenage son of a Civil Guard commander in Basque Country, becomes addicted to heroin.
Acting
José Luis Manzano's raw, non-professional vulnerability destroys you.
Direction
De la Iglesia shoots Bilbao like a funeral for industrial Spain.
Director
Eloy de la Iglesia
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of Spain's 'quinqui' genre—exploitation films about juvenile delinquency that accidentally became social documents of post-Franco working-class collapse.
Lead actor José Luis Manzano was discovered in a juvenile detention center; director de la Iglesia, openly gay in 1980s Spain, cast himself in a small role as a predatory gay character—complicated autobiography.
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