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6d ago

Amenábar’s 'El Cautivo' Opens in Spain, Prompting Scholarly Dispute Over Cervantes’s Sexuality

The director casts the film as a gauge of contemporary homophobia as historians emphasize its homoerotic thread is an interpretive choice rather than established fact.

El director de cine Alejandro Amenábar durante el rodaje de 'El cautivo' con Julio Peña, que interpreta en la película a Miguel de Cervantes.
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Overview

  • Following a TIFF Special Presentations debut and events in Madrid and València, the film reached Spanish cinemas on 12 September after strong festival applause.
  • The drama revisits Cervantes’s 1575–1580 captivity in Algiers through a speculative bond with Hasan el Bajá, starring Julio Peña and Alessandro Borghi.
  • Alejandro Amenábar says the movie is designed to test current attitudes toward homosexuality, insisting on an emotionally driven but respectful approach.
  • Adviser José Manuel Lucía Megías says there is no scientific proof Cervantes was homosexual, while scholars Jordi Gracia and Guillermo Serés reject the claim and Carme Riera deems it plausible yet unprovable.
  • Reviews note a sympathetic portrait of Muslim Algiers and a critique of repressive Christian figures with a restrained same‑sex depiction, and coverage highlights Valencian shooting locations and a high‑profile Oceanogràfic presentation.