The Clan | |
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Film poster
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Directed by | Pablo Trapero |
Produced by |
Hugo Sigman Pedro Almodóvar Agustín Almodóvar Esther García Matías Mosteirín Axel Kuschevatzky |
Written by | Pablo Trapero |
Starring |
Guillermo Francella Peter Lanzani Lili Popovich |
Music by | Vicente D´Elía |
Cinematography | Julián Apezteguia |
Edited by | Alejandro Carrillo Penovi Pablo Trapero |
Distributed by |
20th Century Fox(Argentina) Warner Bros. (Spain) |
Release date
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Running time
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108 minutes |
Country | Argentina Spain |
Language | Spanish |
Box office | US$13.7 million |
The Clan (Spanish: El Clan) is a 2015 Argentine biographical crime film directed by Pablo Trapero. It was selected to be screened in the main competition section of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival, where director Pablo Trapero won the Silver Lion. The film was selected as the Argentine entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards but was not nominated.
The story is based on the case of the Puccio family from Buenos Aires, that kidnapped four people -three of whom they murdered- in the 1980s.
The Puccios appear to be a typical middle-class family from the affluent district of San Isidro, with aspirations of moving up into upper class. The family comprises Arquímedes Puccio, the family patriarch; Epifanía Puccio, his wife; Alejandro, their eldest son and a star rugby player; Daniel "Maguila", their middle child, who'd left the country years ago and hadn't kept in touch; Silvia, their eldest daughter, a school teacher; Guillermo, their youngest son, who is still in high school; and Adriana, their youngest daughter, who is in middle school.
At the end of the Falklands War in 1982, Arquímedes, who had been working for the state's intelligence services in operations to capture communist guerrilla fighters, becomes unemployed. In order to maintain his financial status, he decides to turn to crime and start kidnapping people for ransom, targeting wealthy families. Alejandro starts to collaborate with his father, by identifying potential hostages, taking advantage of his popularity among friends and acquaintances to not raise suspicion.
The first victim is Ricardo Manoukian, a friend and teammate of Alejandro's. Though the kidnapping is successful, Arquímedes kills Ricardo anyway, to avoid any chances of being identified as the kidnapper. After discovering Ricardo has been killed, Alejandro has a bout of conscience, but his father convinces him to keep the secret by assuring him that if Ricardo had been left alive, he would have identified them as the culprits and gotten them all arrested.