Marco, The Invented Truth – HSBC Spanish Film Festival 2025
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https://www.palacecinemas.com.au/movies/spa25-marco-the-invented-truth
Date Reviewed: 05/06/2025
One film having its Australian premiere at the 2025 HSBC Spanish Film Festival is Marco, The Invented Truth. From directors Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño (who combined with Jose Mari Goenaga to bring us 2019’s The Endless Trench), Marco, The Invented Truth is a docudrama based on the adult life of Enric Marco, who gained notoriety for falsely claiming to be a Nazi concentration camp survivor.
Throughout this drama, Marco’s motives for creating and maintaining this lie, are not completely clear; but this doesn’t appear to be the aim of the film. The viewer is only briefly shown what led to Marco creating and developing the lie, and how he justified his actions to himself, to become a spokesperson for the Spanish people that had truly suffered at the hands of the SS (“People have to know this….”). With limited backstory, the plot is mostly dedicated to showing Marco’s attempts to avoid his inevitable exposure, while his status as the Chairman of the Spanish Association of Holocaust Victims, is at the peak of its powers.
Herein lies both the movie’s strengths and weaknesses. Dedicating the majority of the running time to the most dramatic part of Marco’s story allows for a piece, which works better as a 60 Minutes segment, to actually work as a feature film. The use of lighting and camera angles assisting to convey Marco’s anxiety and agitation, combines with a classy musical score that builds more tension than the subject matter justified. With this part of Marco’s downfall also allowing for a grandstand performance by Eduard Fernández, who gets to portray Marco as strong, desperate, vulnerable, and with his reported charisma, at various times throughout.
But like a heist movie, we basically have the same character being both the hero and the villain. Should we side with Marco, and want him to escape detection? Or should we want him to be exposed for his deception and exploitation of such a significant issue? Without a protagonist for the viewer to identify with, you are stuck wanting more justification for Marco’s actions; or at the very least, (like a heist movie) a clever process being implemented by Marco, that allowed him to successfully escape detection for so long (in heist movie terms - sometimes I just want the bank-robber to get away!). But this is something the film lacks.
Either of these things would engage the viewer more to have us further invested, and along for Marco’s ride. Alternatively, a focus on the character that exposed the lie, Benito Bermejo (an under-used Chani Martin); would have also worked, having us side with Bermejo as the protagonist exposing Marco’s lie. But as it stood, there was not enough either way to completely satisfy, and I just waited for the movie to end so I could Google search the man, to find out more on how and why he did it. And while I’m sure my Google browser would have appreciated a break from searches of obscure 90s alt-rock bands and James Remar’s filmography; a bit of cat-and-mouse with Marco “outrunning” his exposure would have worked brilliantly.
Still, on the back of Eduard Fernández’ award-winning performance, and excellent pacing that spans 50 years in a non-linear way; it is a great-looking film that constantly entertains over a tight 100 minutes.