Intacto began its gestation inside the fertile mind of its director and co-writer, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, when as a boy on March 27, 1977, he witnessed the aftermath of history's worst airline disaster. At the airport in his native Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands, two 747 jumbo jets collided on a runway, with 578 people losing their lives. It was a cataclysm of mammoth proportions, and it set young Fresnadillo thinking about the nature of fate and luck.

Much like his protagonist Tomas, who survived a plane crash, and antagonists Federico and Sam in Intacto, Fresnadillo had come to personally understand the meaning of luck, chance and death.

"It was the first time that I saw such a huge airplane,- recalls Fresnadillo about that fateful, tragic day. "My mother was driving us to a cafe as we passed the airport, and I remember seeing the huge aircraft on the runway awaiting permission to take off. The vision disappeared along the treetops. When we arrived at the cafe, I remember the ambulances travelling in the opposite direction.

"For the first time ever, our car broke down," continues Fresnadillo. "just outside the entrance to the airport. I got out and saw the cloud of dark smoke illuminated by the airport lights. I couldn't see anything, but there was a sour smell in the air. I felt like a spectator standing outside a stadium without tickets to a soccer match. Two civilian guards came over to assist us. I remember my mother asking them what had occurred at the airport, while my father was completely silent. I think it was at that exact moment that gave birth to Intacto. It must have been due to my father's silence, my mother's curiosity, and the re-telling of the events by the guards of luck and death. They were unaware that a nine-year-old boy was registering everything in his mind ... just as a survivor captures an event that almost killed him with a video camera."

These memories permeate every frame of Intacto, a film in which luck and death engage.

" I think that Intacto is a thriller with a bit of fable," Fresnadillo states. " It was very important for us to make the story universal, and it was one of the premises that we stuck to when Andres Koppel and I started to write the script. We wanted the film to be understood and viewed anywhere, and have everyone be able to identify with the story."

While preparing the project, Fresnadillo, Koppel and executive producers Fernando Bovaira and Enrique Lopez Lavigne did a great deal of research into the works of another writer and novelist, the late Primo Levi.

A Holocaust survivor himself, Levi wrote a series of extraordinary works, which boldly examined inevitable themes emerging from such a catastrophe, perhaps most notably what came to be known as  "survivor guilt."

The filmmakers found Levi's work extremely illuminating in creating the character of Sam, a man whose massive guilt as the possessor of "undeserved luck" underscores his entire existence. Sam is a deeply complex figure, a man with an ultimate death wish as a way of atoning for his own survival, and the extreme "games" in which he indulges are a means to a desired end, which keeps eluding him.

In selecting his actors, Fresnadillo was absolutely clear on who he wanted to inhabit the crucial role of Sam, this tormented "God of Chance"-the great Max von Sydow, a performer of immense authority. "Sam is a magnetic figure who has his own empire," the actor notes. "He rules it and believes that he was practically chosen to be the one to handle chance."

For his other leads, Fresnadillo dipped into the considerable talent pool of contemporary Spanish cinema, including Argentinean-born star Leonardo Sbaraglia to portray Tomas. I had been following Leonardo's work for years, notes the director. I saw the work he did with the Argentinean director Marcelo Pineyro, and felt that he would be able to capture the true essence of the character. I knew that Lconardo would be able to combine the physical and soulful characteristics that were required for the character of Tomas."

Fresnadillo also cast the fine Spanish actor Eusebio Poncela as Federico, who seeks to use Tomas' luck as a means to a serious end, noting that "Eusebio has the conviction and authority to bring out the commitment and seriousness of the character', as well as Monica Lopez as Sara, a police investigator tormented by a past she is unable to overcome, having survived a car crash which killed her husband and child (Ironically, Lopez is herself a survivor of a devastating car crash which occurred in 1987); and Antonio Dechent as Alejandro - a bullfighter who, miraculously, has never been gored or injured in the corridor.

Fresnadillo became intimately acquainted with the characters created by himself and writing collaborator Andres Koppel, and the strange world they inhabit: "The film is basically centered around Tomas, a thief who has the good luck to survive a plane crash and the bad luck of being caught. We examine the difference between good and bad luck, and how the two can sometimes be confused or merge into one another.

"Federico is calm, and never loses his cool. He is the guide, the one who will take you on a journey straight to hell. Tomas, who is completely ignorant and innocent about this new world, is brought in it since he's a fugitive and has no other choice if he wants to retain his freedom. Federico leads Tomas into this unknown world ... a world like no other."

Helping Fresnadillo to create this "world like no other" was a superb team of creative artists, including director of photography Xavier Jimenez and art director Cesar Macarron. "I'm fascinated by the entire story," says Jimenez. " It provides the opportunity for constant change in lighting and locations. The film was like a gift to me."

In a sense, the shooting echoed the odyssey of its characters. --- Since the film deals with a journey," says Fresnadillo, "this demanded numerous locations. That alone made the production challenging, as we never spent more than two days in any one location. This caused everyone to feel as if they were in constant movement."

In addition to several locations in Madrid, perhaps the most remarkable visual sequences were shot in the director's rugged, otherworldly birthplace, the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Morocco. International film audiences were perhaps first introduced to the Canary Islands when it served, appropriately enough, as the prehistoric backdrop for the campy dawn-of-man goings-on in One Million Years B. C, which starred Raquel Welch in a skimpy animal-skin bikini.

The Canary Islands reveal a primeval landscape of stunning, offbeat beauty, and Tamagana was a highly appropriate location for the bizarre sight of Sam's flashy casino, right in the middle of a lava field. "Filming in the casino was an excellent idea," notes Fresnadillo. ---Apart from using something that is already there, we were also able to demonstrate the beauty of its 1960s decor. It's appropriate that the film begins and ends in Tamagana, in the middle of nowhere, a volcanic valley, the home of Sam, where everyone comes to find the answers to life."

director co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Fresnadillo relocated to Madrid in 1985 to pursue an education in cinema studies and photography before going on to begin his film career as a production assistant on short films. In 1987 he created his own production company, producing various short films and advertising spots. Fresnadillo first earned a following with Spanish audiences when he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1997 for his black and white comedy short film Esposados (Linked) that went on to win 40 national and international awards. In 2002, Fresnadillo won Spain's prestigious Goya Award (the Spanish equivalent of the Academy Awards), for Best New Director for Intacto, which is his full-length feature debut, and was also listed as one of Variety's Top 10 filmmakers to watch.

director's statement
Luck can be stolen... Not long ago I met a woman who has held on to a ticket for a flight she missed 17 years ago. She'd had a few too many drinks the night before and her plane had taken off from Madrid without her, probably with someone else in her scat, someone who'd had his name put on the waiting list. Someone who felt a winner to have been chosen by fate at the eleventh hour to occupy that seat on the plane; a feeling inversely proportional to the guilt the woman felt when she woke up hung over and realised that she wouldn't be making an important meeting. At that moment she didn't know that she would never have attended that meeting anyway. The plane crashed. There were no survivors.

When I asked her why she still had it she didn't exactly know what to say. After a short silence she reached the conclusion that it was her lucky charm ... that piece of paper protected her. That woman was afraid of losing her amulet ... afraid of losing her good luck. She was alive and could feel her luck just like the characters in the film "Intacto." As if it were a treasure you can possess and which, if you hold on to it, will make circumstances protect and favour you over and above all other mortals.

I've always been fascinated by the superstitious feeling that, one way or another, we've all at some time been captives. A delirious, magical feeling that turns the abstract and the chaotic, the uncontrollable movements of chance, into something concrete, ordered and tangible - an object that brings me good luck, a charm that brings order to chaos for my benefit.

When we wrote "Intacto" we let our imagination run wild and went one step further: not only can you possess luck through some object but if you've been singled out by the gods of luck, you can have the "gift." You can steal people's luck just by touching them. "Intacto" fully embraces that magical and dark notion of luck and takes it to an extreme, to a place of gambling and greed where all mortals have a coin - good luck - that you can win, lose or, if you're among the chosen, steal.

Thus when luck is made tangible, material, it becomes a limited, finite thing. Just like money. The inevitable logic of capitalism becomes, in this case, an extraordinary class struggle between those who possess fortune's treasure arid those who don't. But in "Intacto" there's a touch of perversion that gives an extra boost to the film: the "unlucky" ones are unaware of the battle they've unleashed, unaware that they're being robbed. Their luck, their destiny, is being used like a coin in a bet in a dark, destructive game which the very nature of the "lucky" ones has conjured up and laid on as the only relief to the feeling of guilt torturing them. Their luck is not their own. It is the result of a robbery. And, worst of all, a robbery committed even against one's own loved ones.

The sense of guilt and loneliness of the characters in the film is the same as 1 saw in the gleam in the eyes of that woman who refuses to let go of a plane ticket. A ticket that reminds her she is special ... Because others were not.

Two years later, Max von Sydow accepted the role of Sam, the 'God of Good Luck.' The next thing we know, Andres and 1 are sitting across from one of the greatest film actors of all time, going over the lines of what later became the film's most important scene ... the monologue in which Sam describes his survival in a concentration camp.

After those sessions, Max was able to condense the theme of the film into one question, 'What do you do with undeserved luck?' It was a very emotional moment hearing that phrase again when he said farewell to us after filming his final scene. He came to me and gave me a hug that practically swept me off my feet. Max is a great man. I was reminded of the scene shot a few days earlier where Sam hugs Federico to take his  'gift ' -- his luck. In this instance, the quality of the act was more amiable and realistic that that of the scene. It is probably because I felt his touch was a blessing.

I asked Max to sign one of the press books. Max wrote a dedication that is indelibly etched in my memory forever. That same night, someone stole the bag in which among other things, I kept that very special press book.

Good luck tokens come and go in a natural cycle of luck, so what was occurring to me was normal. I think we should all take our tokens of luck and intentionally lose them. The best way to attract good luck is to share it.

I felt that luck again, a year later, when Max von Sydow hugged me at a screening of the film, a gesture by a person whose immense nature comes not from luck or fortune but directly from the heart. At that moment it ran through my mind to replace my precious lost tokens, but there was no need to, as that emotional hug filled the void. There was no more room for anything else."
 
the cast and filmmakers of intacto talk about luck

"Luck is something difficult to define. However, I presume it is something that you obtain without having to work for it."
Max von Sydow (Samuel)

" I suppose that life is an articulation of luck. However, in the process of trying to do what one desires to do something real I surprise myself how one can break away from the obstacles of luck. If you don't combine luck with a bit of personal hard work, then it becomes useless."
Leonardo Sbaraglia (Tomas)

"Chance and luck is something you do not play with, which simply means that it's unknown to us. I love good luck. Sometimes I invoke it. I believe that luck might be God."
Eusebio Poncela (Federico)

"I've always known that my lucky number is seven, but I never knew it would save my life. In 1987, as we traveled along the road, all of a sudden we jolted and lost control. The car flipped seven times and exploded. Yet, we were all unhurt. I only had one small cut on my chin. Seven turns in the end my lucky number had saved my life. I think we have to be really alert or awake in order to obtain luck, yet there are others who can simply catch it as it goes by." 
Monica Lopez (Sara)

"The objective of this film is not to question whether we should believe in luck or whether it really exists or where it comes from. Intacto tells us more about how we can find our own luck."
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Director/Writer)

"The film deals with so much more than just luck ... it deals with how one can control luck."
Enrique Lopez Lavigne (Executive Producer)