Q&A with director Santiago Aguilar!

Justino engages with Spain’s vast tradition of black comedy, brimming with backwards glances and allusions to its rich heritage. If the film at first seems like a simple rehashing of Marco Ferreri’s The Little Coach, it soon becomes clear that its references extend in many different directions, engaging such distinct works as Edgar Neville’s 1946 detective thriller The Crime of Bordadores Street and Fernando Fernán-Gómez’s 1986 Goya Award winner Voyage to Nowhere. Justino takes full advantage of its having been made after the end of the censorship restrictions of the Franco regime, and the creative duo La Cuadrilla (directors Santiago Aguilar and Luis Guridi) revive the figure of the retired man that appears in The Little Coach and Luis García Berlanga’s Not on Your Life.