The Replacement

Cops, Nazis, murder and conspiracy – Oscar Aibar mixes motifs from pulp and genre with a classical mise-en-scène and political-historical analysis.

Spain, 1982: memory of the Franco era is still fresh, the upcoming parliamentary elections are supposed to finally complete the transition from dictatorship to democracy. The policeman Andrés arrives from Madrid in a sleepy Spanish coastal town. His predecessor has been found dead from a presumed heroin overdose. It quickly becomes clear that something isn’t right. And then there’s this German property that Andrés and his colleague are supposed to guard.
Elegant and erudite, director Oscar Aibar plays with the motifs of the police film and the paranoia thriller, developing a dazzling, multifaceted portrait of a society caught between upheaval and corruption. The historical perspective suddenly makes German and Spanish fascism appear not so distant from one another.

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