Tesis

Infobox Film
name = Tesis

---

caption = DVD cover, with Ana Torrent
director = Alejandro Amenábar
producer = Alejandro Amenábar,
writer = Alejandro Amenábar, Mateo Gil
starring = Fele Martínez,
Eduardo Noriega,
Ana Torrent
music = Alejandro Amenábar
cinematography = Hans Burman
editing = María Elena Sáinz de Rozas
distributor =
released = 1996
runtime = 125 min, (Mexico: 118 min)
country = ESP
language = Spanish
budget = P116,000,000
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 1:136126
imdb_id = 0117883

"Tesis" ("Thesis") is a 1996 Spanish film. The feature debut of director Alejandro Amenábar, and written by him and Mateo Gil, it won seven 1997 Goya Awards (and was nominated for an eighth), including the award for Best Film. It stars Ana Torrent, Fele Martínez and Eduardo Noriega. The 1999 film 8mm was loosely based on this film.

Plot synopsis

Ángela "(Torrent)" is a film student at the Madrid's University Complutense. Searching for research material for her "Thesis" (hence the film's title) on audio-visual violence, she attains the friendship of Chema "(Martínez)", a fellow student and introvert with an encyclopedic collection of violent and pornographic films.

After her professor dies while watching a film she steals the videotape, discovering that it is a snuff film featuring a girl whom she and Chema recognize as another student at the university - and a former girlfriend of current student Bosco "(Noriega)". Investigating the origins of the tape, they are drawn into the operations of a chilling snuff ring.

Trivia

*The film was shot in a relatively short five and a half week shoot, preceded by a month of rehearsals.
*The film had a relatively small budget of P116 million - equal to about €696,000.
*Amenábar wrote some of this film while still at University, and that University was the Complutense, as featured in this film.
*One of the teachers who kept failing Amenábar at University had his name used in the film - as the sinister Professor Castro.
*Amenábar's name is visible at one point in the film - on a computer screen listing Sony XT-500 customers. (The XT-500 is a video camera which features prominently within the film itself.)
*One of the major plot devices in the film revolves around certain individuals being caught on the school security cameras; in reality, the UCM School of Communications has no security camera system.
*Amenábar correctly exploits the elaborate, rambling quality of the UCM School of Communications. The building's public corridors extend two levels below ground, and there is at least one level below that, in addition to the School parking garage, which stretches far below and beyond the building and has been bricked off (due to structural issues) since the mid-1990's. The layout of the School's cinémathèque as depicted in the film, however, is incorrect; the video library is accessed from the opposite side of that room, from a doorway located behind the main desk.

External links

*imdb title|id=0117883|title=Tesis
*es icon [http://www.clubcultura.com/clubcine/clubcineastas/amenabar/tesis.htm Profile from Amenábar.com]