Not Sundance but Tribeca for Gil's kid

More than one generation of Spanish filmmakers grew up devouring cowboy movies on TV on Saturday afternoons. So it was only a matter of time before the genre wormed its way into Spanish cinema. Mateo Gil, best known as Alejandro Amenábar's co-screenwriter, has directed the western Blackthorn, which resurrects legendary bandit Butch Cassidy.

After last Sunday's screening of the English-language movie at New York's Tribeca Film Festival, where it was competing in the official section, people - including some interested distributors - were milling around to congratulate Gil and screenwriter Miguel Barros. A commercial release for the film would be a dream for the two men, who fought to get it made for six years. "The script was born out of a trip I made to Bolivia with the idea of making a political documentary that didn't happen. On my return, after discovering that the legend of Butch Cassidy was still very present there, I set about writing," says Barros. "Mateo read it and was excited, but there were many times in which it seemed it wouldn't get filmed."

"We wanted to make it in Spanish," adds Gil. "Nobody was financing it so we opted to do it in English. And showing it here is the acid test."

A solid and entertaining adventure, the film reunites audiences with the character Paul Newman played in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, now an old man, long thought dead, who decides to return home after years in Bolivia. Played by veteran actor Sam Shepard, he embarks on his last adventure accompanied by a Spanish thief, portrayed by Eduardo Noriega. "Despite the association usually made with Butch Cassidy, our reference was The Wild Bunch and all Sam Peckinpah's films," says Gil. "I always wanted to direct, even though life put me beside Amenábar. [...] I learnt an awful lot at his side, but the dream remained."