The original idea for “Notes on the Other” was from Carlos Muguiro, who developed it as a script with Sergio Oksman, the film director. Production was supported by the Regional Government of Navarra and the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

    A story about being “someone else”

On July 7, 1961, the day Ernest Hemingway was buried, one of his most famous impersonators was seen at the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona. That strange appearance was merely the symptom that, from that moment onwards, the figure of the famous writer would last in time through a crowd of doubles.

Nowadays, dozens of Hemingway’s impersonators compete in the Annual Hemingway Look-alike Contest in Key West, Florida. They are determined to be “the true Hemingway after Hemingway’s death.” But, why do they want to be someone else?

The starting point of the movie is one of Hemingway’s first visits to Pamplona in 1924, when the writer himself also wanted “to be someone else.” In those days, in a certain way, a strange pact with shadows, appearances and truth distortion was set. Hemingway would not be able to stay away from it, not even after his death. In the words of the film director, Sergio Oksman, “the hunter’s last trophy will be his own head.”

The movie was shot during Pamplona’s Festival of San Fermín in 2008, in Key West (Florida) and in the house where Hemingway committed suicide in Ketchum (Idaho). One of the main characters is Pío Guerendiáin, a methodical and constant photographer who has spent more than 50 years taking pictures of the “encierros” (running of bulls in the streets) from the very same corner.