EUROPE IMAGES INTERNATIONAL - M5

Synopsis

Moscow 1968. Rubén Gallego was born the only survivor of premature twins suffering from cerebral palsy.
His young mother Aurora had been sent by her father, a Spanish communist party leader in exile in Paris, to study in Moscow. Aurora falls in love with a Venezuelan guerriller lord and becomes pregnant. It's a scandal, and mother and child live segregated in the same institute for over a year. When doctors tell Aurora's father that the baby will be severely disabled for life he decides to lie, partly to protect his political career interests: he tells Aurora that the child has died in hospital.
But Rubén is not dead. He will live as an abandoned and disabled boy moved from one Soviet orphanage to the next, but he survives despite humiliation, cruelty and pain. Even though his nurses saw him as mentally retarded, Rubén was taught how to read by his companions.
In 1989 with the fall of the Berlin wall Rubén starts the search for his true identity. He discovers his Spanish origin and sets out to find even distant relatives. He embarks on a daring and extraordinary journey through Europe and finally in 2001 he finds his mother in Prague. Rubén lives now with Aurora and half sister, Anna.

RED TORPEDO is the story of a tenacious survival, against all odds: the sadistic nurses, the first books, the soviet propaganda.
Rubén tells his tale with irony and sharpness showing an indomitable instinct, a greatness of mind that through pieces of real and of dreamt life, builds a story of misery and abandonment, and at the same time of hope and courage.
The film illuminates the coexistence of a remarkable intelligence and a terrible handicap, which allows Rubén just to use his hand: the same hand that once feed his friend Misha in the orphanage, 30 years later, Misha put an autograph on his friend’s first book.