The film Living is Easy with Eyes Closed will be screened at St James Cavalier Cinema, Valletta, tomorrow at 7.30pm.
Based on a true story, the film is set in Almería, Spain, in 1966, where John Lennon, suffering an existential crisis, decides to launch his acting career and leave The Beatles. He arrives in Almería to shoot the war movie How I Won the War under the direction of Richard Lester. Antonio, an English teacher who teaches in a State school in Albacete, decides to travel to Almeria to meet Lennon and make him an unusual offer.
En route, Antonio meets Belen who has just left a convent in the middle of the night to escape the turmoil and reclusive life her family and society forced upon her. Antonio and Belen then encounter Juanjo, a 16-year-old who has fled his house because he won’t cut his hair – he looks like a Beatle.
For the three of them, Lennon becomes an aspirational symbol of freedom. Against the backdrop of provincial 1960s Almería, in the same days in which Lennon wrote the song Strawberry Fields Forever, the three share an adventure that represents a country’s thwarted aspirations for a better future.
The film is in Spanish. Admission is free but booking is required via https://www.kreattivita.org .