With the support Swedish Film Insitute, Film i Väst, Nordisk Film Distribution, Sicilia Film Commission, Calabria Film Commission, Eurimages Co-production Development Award.
SYNOPSIS
Based on a true story, Madame Luna is a thrilling drama about an Eritrean refugee girl who is washed ashore in Libya, and with time becomes one of the most notorious human smugglers with deep ties to the Italian Mafia.
THE DIRECTOR
Jorge Daniel Espinosa is a Swedish-Chilean film director, screenwriter and film producer from Trångsund, Stockholm. He graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 2001. He notably directed the Sony’s Marvel Universe film Morbius starring Jared Leto and other films including Life, Easy Money, The Boxer, Babylon Disease, Outside Love and Child 44.
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
When I started making movies, my ambition was always to reveal the parts of society that we rarely see, due to the reality of socioeconomic injustice. My motivation remains the same. When I heard the story of Madame Luna, my breath was taken. I couldn’t ask for a greater challenge, or a more crucial movie to make, in my return to European cinema.
Madame Luna’s life is a lens through which our society can be seen for what it actually is, through which we as an audience can be given a sense of what it really means to be a refugee, or to be a human trafficker. It gives us access and proximity, not only to the victims of this current world order, but to the profiteers as well.
Madame Luna is a complex character, difficult to understand. Once a victim herself – a victimization which then turned her into a perpetrator – her journey takes many turns, leading her to gain and lose privilege and power. And these turns allow us to come close to every aspect of the situation of thousands of migrants, whose lives lay in the hands of political authorities and the claws of the mafia.
CREDITS
Director: Daniel Espinosa
D.o.p.: Juan Sarmiento G.
Editing: Theis Schmidt
Set design: Brigitte Broch
Music: Jon Ekstrand
Produced by: Dugong Films (IT), Momento Film (SE)