Martin, the main character, played by young actor Ángel Velasco looks for a veteran actor, to play the role of Aaraklos, the bad brother in the tragedy "Tartessos". The chosen is Carlos, played by Eduardo Velasco actor with long track in Spanish stage and TV, also films. Both will fight as fictional brothers in the final combat, but even if sharing the same surname, Velasco, they are not family nor relatives in real life.
The play writer behind the story is Miguel Romero Esteo, starring in the film as himself, interviewed by Martin. Romero Esteo has won most theatre prizes in Spain, also won with "Tartessos" Europe award in 1985 and has been rumored as candidate to Nobel Prize. But still this tragedy has never been put on stage: even if several prestigious theatre directors have tried, all these attempts failed due to its complexity and length.
"Tartessos", the theater play that Martin tries to put on stage as a drama school exercise, sets up an Ancient kingdom in South Spain supposed to be the origin of western civilization. When Romero Esteo wrote the play in 1980, there were not enough archaeological evidence to prove its existence. Still, Romero Esteo puts Tartessos as previous to Greece and invents a language, music and royal family as part of the Tartessian culture.
Text and songs by the old Tartessian characters is spoken in an invented language, set up by the author after a research about the eldest texts in European populations. The result is supposed to be the language of Tartessos, origin of the continent according to the myth. Still part of the freedom of the playwright Miguel Romero Esteo, who published several books on the same subject.
The scene with a Virgin Mary being taken into the sea was recorded in 2013 at the neighborhood of El Palo, a traditional fishermen quarter in the city of Malaga, where this procession happens every July 16th with a crowd following both in land and later by boat. Fishermen adore their goddess, patron of all sailors, shouting and singing to her in tradition flamenco rhythms.