Milos Forman Presents Film on Life of Goya

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Czech director Milos Forman yesterday presented Goya's Ghosts, a historical drama based on the life of the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, in Madrid.

The film, starring Danish actor Stellan Skarsgard in the main role and Natalie Portman as the artist's muse, depicts Spanish power through the eyes of Goya from 1792-1809, between the end of the Inquisition and Napoleon's invasion.

Forman, born in 1932, said the work draws on his experiences of totalitarianism under the Nazis and the Communists.

"In the Spain of Goya, I looked for echoes of my life under Nazism and Communism," he told reporters.

Forman lost his parents in the Auschwitz concentration camp and then emigrated to the United States after the Communists took power in his homeland.

He said that his film delves into the "horrors of humanity whose lessons we still have to learn."

Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who starred in the recent smash hit The Sea Inside, plays Brother Lorenzo, a highly influential religious figure during the Inquisition who enters into a relationship with Ines, Goya's young and beautiful muse.

Ines is accused of heresy and thrown into prison.

Michael Lonsdale is also set to appear in the movie, which will be filmed in Madrid and the surrounding area. The script was co-written by Forman and Jean-Claude Carriere, the duo behind the film Valmont.

Copyright 2006 Agence France Presse