Ricardo Darín to star in Netflix’s ‘El eternauta’ series
Argentina’s most popular actor Ricardo Darin confirmed he will star in Netflix’s adaptation of the iconic comic book El eternauta, a 1957 story about an alien invasion in Buenos Aires that became a cultural classic.
The Argentina, 1985 star told CNN Radio that the adaptation project is “huge and very complex” and will be “an updated version” of the story that aims to have “a wider reach, beyond the borders of our country.”
“It’s based on the original comic, but it’s a new version, and we’re all very excited and moved by it,” he said
Originally published as a weekly comic strip in the magazine “Hora Cero” in 1957, El eternauta (“The Eternaut”, a Spanish neologism that describes an astronaut of eternity) is one of the most popular comic books in the history of Argentine graphic novels.
Written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López, El eternauta tells the story of a 1963 alien invasion of Buenos Aires that begins with a deadly fluorescent snowfall and includes military combats in landmark Buenos Aires areas such as the River Plate stadium. The hero, Juan Salvo, is a common family man who joins the meager local resistance forces in order to protect his wife and daughter from the invaders.
“I’m preparing for some very hard work. It’s going to demand a lot both physically and mentally,” said Darin, who will be playing Salvo in the series.
The adaptation will be directed by Bruno Stagnaro —a pioneer of the New Argentine Cinema in the late 1990s who co-directed Pizza, Beer and Cigarettes and the cult tv show Okupas. It will be produced by Netflix and K&S, one of the biggest production companies in the country, responsible for high-profile films such as Damian Szifron’s Oscar-nominated Wild Tales and Santiago Mitre’s The Summit, both starring the lead actor of Argentina, 1985.
A politically-driven writer who tapped issues like imperialism and colonialism in Latin America, author Héctor Oesterheld wrote several renowned comic books, including a biography of Che Guevara that was censored in 1968, as well as a second, more outspokenly political version of El eternauta in 1969, illustrated by Alberto Breccia.
By the time of the 1976 coup, Oesterheld was an active member of Montoneros, one of the main guerrilla organizations that fought the dictatorship. He eventually had to go into hiding, where he continued to work and finished El eternauta 2. He was kidnapped by a military task force in La Plata on April 27, 1977, and became one of Argentina’s 30,000 “disappeared”. Before his abduction, the entire Oesterheld family had been decimated by dictatorship forces. They kidnapped and killed his four daughters —two of whom were pregnant— and three of his sons-in-law.
Since the return of democracy, there have been several projects for the audiovisual adaptation of El eternauta, something long awaited by generations of comic book fans. Renowned Argentine directors such as Adolfo Aristarain and Fernando “Pino” Solanas were some of the filmmakers who considered making a film version of the Juan Salvo story. The latest one involved art-house director Lucrecia Martel, who officially announced she was working on an adaptation, but the project didn’t come through due to artistic differences with Oesterheld’s heirs.
'Eternaut' still gives lessons in political resistance
The Argentine classic sci-fi comic from 1957 by Héctor Germán Oesterheld reflects his resistance to the terror that hit his country - two decades later. Aliens take power in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires. They send toxic snow, deadly beetles and stinging monsters. A clever father, Juan Salvo, decides to fight the powerful invaders who remain hidden and anonymous, remotely controlling their terrifying pawns.
He is the "Eternaut," an "eternal traveler," who ends up traveling through time and space in search of his family.
The Argentine comic book writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld was the author of the science fiction comic "El Eternauta," published in 1957 - and again in December 2015 in English under the name "The Eternaut."
Twenty years after writing this comic, Oesterheld experienced a similar fate as his character's. In his comic, aliens mercilessly exterminated the population in Buenos Aires. In real-life Argentina, the military junta under Jorge Rafael Videla imposed totalitarian rule in 1976, terrorizing the population.
Oesterheld and his four daughters joined a leftist guerilla group opposed to the dictatorship and ended up among the 30,000 Argentines who vanished during that period. Known as the "desaparecidos," they were tortured, kidnapped and killed.
Hector German Oesterheld
Germán Oesterheld disappeared during Argentina's military dictatorship
It has since been established that his daughters were murdered, and it is believed that Oesterheld himself was murdered by the regime in 1979, but his body was never found.
'The Eternaut' in Germany
Oesterheld's comic, with its impressive drawings by Francisco Solano López, became a huge success in Argentina. It is now finding its way to the German market: In book form, the science fiction classic was translated to German and published in January 2016.
To underline this publication, the Literature House in Stuttgart is showing a comic exhibition called "The Myth Eternauta - Héctor Germán Oesterheld," held until April 15, 2016.
Anna Kemper, journalist for the German weekly "Die Zeit," initiated the project. In January 2015 she published a long-form article about Oesterheld's tragically disappeared family. She had learned about their story in 2009 while doing research in Argentina for another article. She saw pictures of Oesterheld's four young, lively daughters, who lost their lives fighting the regime. "Once I had seen those pictures, I couldn't forget them," Anna Kemper told DW. "I just couldn't let go of this story." Five years later, she met relatives of the comic book author.
When dystopian science-fiction predicts reality
Oesterheld's personal story and the one he wrote offer chilling similarities: The invasion of a hidden power, a family organizing the resistance, captivity in torture camps and the endless search for the lost family, to name just a few.
Anna Kemper, co-curator of the current exhibition in Stuttgart, says the show explores how reality eerily reflects fiction. On May 10, the exhibition will move on to Berlin's "Literarisches Colloquium."
Did Héctor Germán Oesterheld foresee the events that would hit his country? Anna Kemper doesn't think so. The comic from the 1950s was inspired by the Cold War, and similar events occurred under various forms of totalitarian rule.
Instead, Kemper explains the similarities the other way around: "Someone who wrote such a story could not simply stay passive under those conditions. He was politicized and had to stand up for his values, even if it was clear that doing so, he was risking his life," she says. The comic book "El Eternauta" thus deeply reflected Oesterheld's personality and values, and that later led him to he join the resistance against the military junta's regime.
'Eternaut' as a symbol against forgetting
Reading "El Eternauta" today allows one to make associations with a dark chapter of Argentine history. A chapter that is not yet closed; the issue occupies Argentine society to this day. In recent years - particularly under the government of Néstor Kirchner from 2003 to 2007 - historical reappraisal of the events under the military dictatorship have become a stronger part of the public agenda.
In the comic, the hero is defeated, doomed to spend the rest of his life searching for his family through space and time. "An incredible number of Argentines can still identify with this condition," says Anna Kemper. Many do not know what happened to family members at that time and continue to search for their disappeared parents or children.
The character, found in graffiti and in a subway station, remains a powerful symbol in Argentina. A political figure that stands for people who fight against odds for human rights, the "Eternaut" recalls the necessity of delving into the history of the dictatorship, says Anna Kemper.
Comic El Eternauta von Héctor Germán Oesterheld -Copyright: avant-verlagComic El Eternauta von Héctor Germán Oesterheld -Copyright: avant-verlag
The subway station Uruguay in Buenos Aires features the EternautImage: Héctor Germán Oesterheld/Francisco Solano López/avant-verlag
History repeats itself
She also notes that people are being "disappeared" in other dictatorships today. In Syria for example, around 60,000 people have disappeared under Assad's regime, according to Amnesty International. "The same methods are being reproduced: You can simply switch names and see that what happened in Argentina keeps repeating itself," she says.
With his comic "El Eternauta," Héctor Germán Oesterheld created a visionary, historically important work that has lost none of its power. His two sequels, written during the Resistance, are even more political but still await a translation in English or German.