Argentina returns, Land of Love and Vengeance, and returns looking at the 80s, looking at the beginnings of that democracy that today, since its return, is 40 years old. It will go, of course, in prime time on El Trece, and Pol-Ka’s production seeks what TV needs: a fictional phenomenon that generates employment for the actors and salutes a tradition. In this case, there will be many stories and one of them will be the love of Segundo and Antonio, and it is one of the stories that will touch the heart the most, both from that time and its calamities and from our present, doomed when it can to greater diversity.
Love in times of fury. The actor Tato Quattordio speaks happily about precisely that love that will be seen on screen: “The love that happens between my character, Segundo Salvat, and Antonio, Toni Gelabert’s character, is difficult to define. But I think it is inevitable. It is a love that yes, starts when they are young. When Antonio returns from exile, Segundo had hidden everything in the cartel. And repenting he realizes that everything is still there. There appears the duty to be, the family, the marriage ”. Of course, the Spaniard Gelabert adds to that enthusiasm: “It’s an easy love: what happens to my character is that he discovers his sexuality, although he was always clear about it, and just the night he experiences his sexuality with the character of Tato Quattordio, precisely that same night you must leave for Spain. 7 years pass, and he wants to return to that love, which he followed through letters. But when he arrives he is about to marry a girl and that takes my character by surprise. So things, with love triangles, and even more things. The love story is very cute.” Of course, fiction and its actors know that the context of the rebirth of democracy is important. Gelabert makes it very clear: “I didn’t know much about the story, at least before I was chosen in the casting. When I stayed, it was four months of soaking up information, and sometimes I found myself crying when reading certain things, thinking about who was locked up, about the cruelty carried out by the military. By getting emotional, I discovered in my own way how much can mobilize those who watch this series. We tell very well what those years were like. My character has a mother who was in the ESMA, his sister is missing, my grandmother is a grandmother from Plaza de Mayo. People are going to be touched a lot. Although there is that tragedy, there are the 80s, the looks, the music and more.
“We count very well,” says Gelabert, and that’s something that matters to all the actors. Gloria Carrá is Sara Machado, and she was also marked by the idea of “telling that moment well”. Carrá: “At first it seems very interesting to me to play a song from the 80s, as before they talked about the beginning of the last century, now they talk about a more recent era. The 80s are a strong topic, because here they film when the military leaves power, and there is a lot of talk about it. It’s good to be able to show that and it was done with a lot of truth and freedom. It shows what happened. In the case of my character, he was in favor of the military. They’re going to hate me but someone has to do those people too, and on top of that he says atrocities, that they were yesterday and they are today. That kind of people exist. I felt very free to do it.” Rafael Machado, Sara’s husband, is played by Federico D’Elía who tells his part: “This new Atav is made up of four stories that sometimes come together and come together. I belong to one of them, where I am the head of the family, a doctor who joined the Military Hospital during the Dictatorship, a pro-military. Someone who has the worst things, and who is in a family where things don’t work well for him. He suffers from having his children gay. He has a dead son who went to the Malvinas. That creates guilt. He’s a risky guy. You have to see how the character develops. Other than that, we are all very happy with what we filmed.”
The joy of returning It is not something to ignore: Atav is a big bet, looking into the eyes of the fictional model to which we have grown ill accustomed today. D’Elia, with vast experience in different TV models, makes it clear: “It is a privilege to return to air TV with fiction. He was killed by the pandemic and suddenly a lot of things got done for the platforms. That is over, little is done for the platforms and the channels are still not producing. Pol-Ka gambled, betting on the novel, betting on the actors, on a format that defines us quite culturally. If we work it well, there is an audience for that. I feel privileged, without a doubt.” And Carrá adds: “It’s been a long time since I did fiction, several years. It seems very valuable to me that fiction returns to open TV. Valuable for us actors, but also for the technicians, for all those who worked on this. You upload it to social networks and you realize how people celebrate it. Everyone says ‘finally national fiction’. I think it’s great that Pol-ka bets on that and that is valued. Television was important to many actors, to their economy. A series like this is something important. It was very nice to see that level of production. The clothes, the costumes are impeccable and the scenery cannot be believed, they made houses. We filmed everything in Pol-ka. We had vintage cars, everything. It was very impressive. TV needs that, it needs fiction”.
the past thought
Tato Quattordio tells about the way in which his character’s sexual identity is built and suggests the great work that was done in this regard: “It was a moment with a lot of freedom, with a lot of chaos, but with things related to very close danger, the military with power and still having their way in the street. The revisionism of what was happening is important, which in my case is told from the secrets of the Salvats, with my father, played by Federico D’Elia, and my mother, by Gloria Carrá: a family of secrets, which is not known. You know how much I participate. On the one hand it’s fighting for her love, and another is seeing what I didn’t see before. That was something that really attracted me, the love story between two men. Already in Simona with Blas, in 2018, many things can be told. But it was worth telling on TV. Here, in the 80s, there was still a lot of social pressure on what one had to do. Our story serves to tell how many things were that some people today do not know. Here the conformation of the CHA is told, one of the principles of everything is told. The 80s is a modern age, but it serves to see the contrast with our today. Toni Gelabert adds: “The pace of work on something like this cannot be compared to anything else. We record almost one chapter per day and one chapter per day equals 20 minimum scenes per day. It is a giant learning, that you do not gain in other places ”.
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