The film about the martyrs of El Salvador opens on March 25.

The official trailer is now available for "Llegaron de noche" (They arrived by night), the new film by Imanol Uribe about the massacre of the Jesuits in El Salvador, which will hit cinemas on 25 March. The Basque filmmaker is once again behind the camera to direct a gripping script based on the true story of the only witness to the Jesuit crime in El Salvador in which the priest and liberation theologian Ignacio Ellacuría was murdered.

Shot last winter between Spain and Colombia, the film, which was originally announced under the title "La Mirada de Lucía", will be presented definitively as LLEGARON DE NOCHE, in allusion to the premonition of Ellacuría himself, who at one point in the film is heard to say: "If they kill me during the day they will know it was the guerrillas, but if they arrive at night it will be the military who kill me".

A story of characters

The film, which captures the events that shocked an entire generation, is, beyond its political and social background, a story of characters, of their struggle for truth and justice in a country at war, and of their eagerness to overcome that moment of horror.

Juana Acosta gives life to Lucía, the cleaning lady who fortuitously witnessed the massacre without the killers noticing her. An anonymous and courageous woman determined to ensure that the truth prevails. Carmelo Gómez plays Father Tojeira, the other living protagonist of the story, always ready to seek understanding, in defence of truth and justice. Tojeira himself has collaborated in the process of writing the script, contributing precise details that contribute to constructing a story that is faithful to what happened in those days. Ben Temple plays the passionate and belligerent Father Tipton, probably one of the most influential men of the time in the United States. And Karra Elejalde plays Father Ellacuría, the Basque priest who, together with his companions in the Society of Jesus, proclaimed the theology of liberation, giving a voice to the most disadvantaged, confronting both the guerrillas and the iron military dictatorship that ruled the country at the time.

Coinciding with the trial in the National Court

With a screenplay by Daniel Cebrián, written after exhaustive work involving several years of documentation, the story of LLEGARON DE NOCHE is now highly topical when the case was reopened in El Salvador just a few weeks ago, following the annulment last year of the trial against the masterminds of the murder.  The filming coincided with the trial held in the Spanish National Court in which the former colonel and former vice-minister of Public Security of El Salvador, Inocencio Montano, one of the Salvadoran soldiers implicated in the crime, extradited to our country by the US three years ago, was sentenced to 133 years and 4 months in prison for the murder of the Spanish Jesuits on the night of 15-16 November 1989.

Meanwhile, the only witness to the events remains outside El Salvador in a discreet place that she still prefers not to reveal, where she has rebuilt her life.

It invites us to remember

The script has the approval of the Society of Jesus, which has been advising the producers over the last few months, both from Spain and from El Salvador. "We took Uribe's idea of making this film with great enthusiasm. The important thing about the project is that it invites us to remember. To not forget what happened in 1989 and what has been happening in many places in Latin and Central America, which is the persistent experience of injustice and violence, and which the Society of Jesus is still trying to respond to today through the institutions it has in those countries," said the Jesuit Provincial in our country, Antonio España, who visited the filming site the same day it began.

Look at the trailer of the movie