WINNER x 7 – 2024 GAUDÍ AWARDS – incl. Best Actor and Best Actress
WINNER - 2024 FEROZ AWARDS - Best Actor
NOMINEE x 11 - 2024 SPANISH ACADEMY AWARDS (Goyas) – incl Best Film
From multi-award-winning writer/director David Trueba (Living Is Easy… With Eyes Closed), JOKES AND CIGARETTES tells the moving true story of the iconic Catalan humourist Eugenio Jofra whose hilarious, deadpan alter-ego became a staple of Spanish comedy in the turbulent 70s, a success that belied considerable turmoil behind the scenes.
Barcelona, mid 1960s. When timorous young jeweller Eugenio (David Verdaguer, Summer 1993, in a Goya-winning performance) meets the gorgeous folk singer Conchita Alcaide (a wonderful Carolina Yuste, Carmen & Lola) on a bus, it is love at first sight. Eugenio becomes invested in her career, learning to play guitar, and despite his crippling stage fright they form a duo, Els dos (‘The Two’), with Eugenio’s deep voice a counterpart to Conchita’s sweet delivery. As the couple marries and starts a family, their act achieves minor success – even competing with Nina Rota and Julio Iglesias to become Spain’s Eurovision entrant – and they secure a residency at a local club. It’s there that a reluctant Eugenio must perform solo one night when Conchita is away, quickly discovering that his talent for telling stories far exceeds his musical abilities.
As word about his show spreads, Eugenio & Conchita perfect an on-stage persona for him that quickly becomes a phenomenon across a depressed nation desperate to laugh, changing their lives forever…
Expertly recreating the laugh-out-loud genius of Eugenio’s stand-up and featuring a terrific soundtrack of 60s and 70s Catalan music, Trueba’s loving, bittersweet portrait is based on a book by the couple’s son Gerard, capturing the hidden life of a beloved artist who brought joy to so many.
