No visible tattoos or too modern haircuts or coloring. These are the conditions that the casting team in charge of selecting extras for the next film by film director Alejandro Amenábar excludes when making a selection that will take place on Thursday in Alicante and on Friday in Santa Pola, two of the main locations of the filming.
In ‘El Cautivo’, the author of ‘Thesis’, ‘The Sea Inside’ and ‘The Others’ recreates the time in Miguel Cervantes’ life in which he was imprisoned in Algiers for five years after being captured at 28 by Barbary pirates. To do this, Amenábar looks for men and women of legal age “of all ethnicities,” who are promised paid work and registration with Social Security.
Those interested should go on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. to the Puerta Ferrisa municipal building, very close to the Town Hall, or on Friday to 12 Castaños Street in Santa Pola, at the same times. The company Temps, in charge of the selection process, specifies that candidates will be attended to in order of arrival.
It is not the first casting that has been carried out for this project. The Equipo Casting agency has made several calls for “various acting profiles”, from extras to secondary roles with text. On the one hand, an advertisement was published calling for Arab men between 18 and 70 years old residing in Valencia.
On the other hand, “very thin” European men between 25 and 55 years old were sought; It can be assumed that Amenábar needs people whose appearance makes them credible as “captives”, companions in confinement of the author of Don Quixote.
A third advertisement from this same agency claimed Italian men between 18 and 55 years old, both in Valencia and Alicante. It must be remembered that ‘El Cautivo’ will be filmed at the Ciudad de la Luz studios in Alicante, in the Santa Pola fortress, in the Santa Bárbara castle and in locations in Pedreguer, Anna, Bocairent and Bunyol.
