Director Mikel Gurrea has completed a new urban drama titled ‘Saints,’ which has been acquired for international distribution by M-Appeal. The film emerged from Gurrea’s curiosity about his own neighborhood in Barcelona’s Sants district, where he began researching religious art thefts after noticing a consistently locked church building. This research sparked the creation of the protagonist Lali, a character first conceived as someone stealing a saint statue from a chapel while maintaining an ambiguous emotional state between performance and genuine grief.
Lali is portrayed by Victoria Luengo, who previously collaborated with Gurrea on ‘Suro.’ The actress reunites with the director for this expanded production, having participated in the character development process through workshops and creative discussions that informed subsequent script drafts co-written by Gurrea and Francisco Kosterlitz. Luengo’s Lali becomes entangled in competing demands: an estranged relationship with her mother Gloria, played by Ariadna Gil, and involvement with a group of art thieves led by a character named Rosario.
The narrative structure interweaves intimate family drama with heist-thriller elements, centered on the tension between duty and desire for freedom. As Lali becomes closer to Rosario’s group, the boundaries between her domestic and criminal worlds begin to blur, with the gang eventually infiltrating her mother’s home. Gurrea notes that different forms of care and attention operate throughout the film, whether directed toward people or sacred objects, with the thieves’ approach to stolen religious artifacts emphasizing appreciation and delicacy rather than simple desecration.
Gurrea drew inspiration from historical research into religious art theft, particularly the 20th-century cases of Erik the Belgian, whose ritualistic approach to church robberies and descriptions of buyer reverence toward stolen objects informed the film’s treatment of these crimes. The director explores the ambiguity between iconoclasm and idolatry as conceptual mirrors, using these themes to examine Lali’s evolving relationship with both her mother and Catholicism. The film maintains a playful tone reflecting its protagonist’s nature while simultaneously incorporating layers of cinematic and religious mystery.
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