Heiners Filmseiten – Daddy’s War (en)

Daddy’s War (La guerra de papá)

German title: La guerra de papá (Papas Krieg)
Russian title: Папина война
Original title: La guerra de papá

Family comedy – Spain
Production year: 1977
Movie length: 92 minutes

Director: Antonio Mercero
Writer: Horacio Valcárcel, Antonio Mercero, Miguel Delibes
Cinematograph: Manuel Rojas

Movie description:

Told from a four-year-olds perspective, this film explores one day in the life of Quico, the child of a middle-class Madrid family. His adored father fought with Franco’s troops against the Republicans, and never tires of telling the boy stories of his exploits. Among the toddler’s many endearing pranks on that day alone, he pretends to have swallowed a needle, floods the bathroom by stopping up the toilet, and generally misinterprets everything he hears to fit what he is able to understand. Meanwhile, the boy also sees and understands a great deal more than the grown-ups around him would be happy knowing about: such as that his parents aren’t getting along and that the maid has a lover.

Spain, March 1964: Quico is a very naughty child of four belonging to a wealthy middle-class family. Since Cristina’s birth, he feels he has lost the privileged position of »prince« of the house for his eight months old sister. So, with his brother Juan, who is eight years old and is quite disobedient, spend their time committing prank after prank, causing the resulting anger of his mother, the nanny and the old housemaid. The rest of the family members are two much older brothers, his resigned mother and a retrograde father of authoritarian ideas. But many years have passed, and the civil war that won the despot Don Pablo is simply for their children »Dad’s war«.

Boy Actors