The 90s of Spanish cinema belonged to Manuel Gómez Pereira. The director accumulated success after success. Especially in comedy. Together with their trusted scriptwriters, Joaquín Oristrell and Yolanda García Serrano, they took the issues that were floating around in society and turned them into popular comedies that swept the box office. Pink sauce, Why do they call it love when they mean sex?, Word of mouth, Love seriously harms health…all of them were created by the same minds, which made up the hits of several generations of viewers.

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However, since 2010 he had only released one film (Ignorance of blood2014) and focused his work on successful series such as Velvet, The cable girls o Tell me how it happened. But in 2025, destiny has smiled on Gómez Pereira again and Spanish cinema once again looks back to the 90s. In April it premiered successfully A crazy funeralthe remake of the Frank Oz film and this Friday its second title arrived in a year. It is about The dinner, the adaptation of the play by José Luis Alonso de los Santos that fantasizes about a dinner that never happened, the one that was organized just after the Civil War ended at the Palace in honor of Franco.

The work of De los Santos, and now the film of Gómez Pereira, set up a kind of Evasion or Victory with that plot, since to organize the dinner it is necessary to get Republican prisoners out of jail who are being carried out on the execution horn to return to their workplaces: waiters, cooks... Now they will have one last opportunity that they will use to plan an escape that will grant them freedom. With these wicks, Gómez Pereira and his usual scriptwriters put together a current, fun comedy that is not afraid of getting wet and that has its best asset in the duel (with a homoerotic tinge) of Alberto San Juan and Mario Casas.

A popular but political cinema that serves as confirmation of the return of the director, who tells elDiario.es that this double return has been a bit “like Murphy's law.” In fact, the project Dinner was born a long time ago, in 2008, when Sancho Gracia, who produced and starred in the play on which it is based, gave him the text to read. “There's a movie there,” he told him. And he was right. As if it were a wink of fate, Alonso de los Santos was Fernando Colomo's assistant director in Get down to the Moor, written by Joaquín Oristrell, so Gómez Pereira already knew him.

Therefore, it is a project that “has always been there.” “I have never thought that it was going to stay in a drawer, there are projects that you pursue, and when Cristóbal García, the producer, asked me if I had any project that I wanted to do, I proposed this one to him,” says the filmmaker. There he began to work with his two usual suspects, Oristrell and García Serrano, in an adaptation that had to “maintain respect for the work,” but not remain theatrical. For this reason, the film leaves the Palace, adds plots and, very importantly, introduces Franco as a character, who in the play acted as a Godot who never appeared on stage.

The film addresses a topic such as the postwar period through humor, and Gómez Pereira completely rejects the false mantra that says that there are many films about the Spanish Civil War. "There is perhaps a part of the public that says that, but I have not yet heard anyone say 'another film about the Vietnam War', for example. Yes, being a comedy and being a period film, it has been a difficult film to put together, but finally we have achieved it," he says.

Laughter and a sense of humor seem to me to be a weapon of both defense and attack.

Manuel Gomez Pereira — Film-maker

What is clear to him is that this part of history is “imperishable.” Not only that, but with “what is happening, with this tremendous polarization, with these far-right movements and everything that is happening in these endless wars and this genocide in Gaza” the film becomes even more important. "Now figures appear that are very dangerous, who are disguised as populists, but what is really underneath are dictators. It is a totalitarianism in the making. It is important to remember what the consequences that a war can produce. Devastation, famine, death and pain. We must not forget it," he concludes.

He, who has directed the most successful comedies in this country, knows that laughter is important. It is “now and always, but in times like this it is essential.” “Laughter and a sense of humor seem to me to be a weapon of both defense and attack,” he says forcefully.

When you mix humor and the Civil War, the clear reference that appears in almost everyone's head is The heiferby Luis García Berlanga, but Gómez Pereira adds another reference, the Oh, Carmela! which Carlos Saura directed with a script by Rafael Azcona.

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“It had humor, but there was a lot of humanity and fantastic characters. Or Bicycles are for summerby Chávarri. Movies where that tone of comedy is played, but at the same time they have a lot of truth, which is what I pursue when I make these comedies," he adds. Comedies that, in addition, are left open in a final twist that was not in the work for a possible sequel.