Produced by siblings Borja and Inés Zavala, aged twenty-three and twenty-two respectively, An Angel Called Rebeca will soon be released in theaters distributed by European Dreams Factory. It is the third film in the Zavalas’ filmography, after the successful films Heaven Can’t Wait and The Heartbeat of Heaven, both about the Italian Blessed Carlo Acutis.
On this occasion, Borja and Inés Zavala address the story of Rebeca Rocamora Nadal, born in Granja de Rocamora, province of Alicante, on September 7, 1975. She is the best example of how reality surpasses fiction: a young blonde with lake eyes, died of cancer at the age of twenty, on May 26, 1996, the feast of Pentecost.
Declared a Servant of God by the Holy See, no one or almost no one today knows her egregious figure or her troubled life during which she relived in her flesh the Passion of Christ. Seriously ill since she was ten years old, she carried on her own Golgotha until her death, with a smile always on her lips and a permanent concern for making others happy, starting with her own family and friends.
A girl, in short, who proved from the beginning with her daily behavior, that one can be holy without doing extraordinary things, frequenting the sacraments, adoring Jesus in the Eucharist, and maintaining a filial relationship with the Virgin Mary based on the Holy Rosary beads. One of those “saints next door”, paraphrasing Pope Francis.
José Ignacio Munilla, Bishop of Orihuela-Alicante, comments that one of the greatest joys when taking possession of his new Diocese was finding Rebeca’s process underway, and now he participates in this first film about her together with the postulate of her process of beatification, José Cristóbal Moreno, and Sister Milagros, a Carmelite nun cured by her intercession in the face of the stupefaction of the doctors.
In An Angel Called Rebeca, the testimonies of Rebeca’s mother, María del Rosario Nadal, and her three sisters also come to light: Laura, Rosa and Lourdes, who reveal unknown anecdotes about the Servant of God from the most tender of her childhood. The involvement of the family and those in charge of the ecclesiastical process in this first film about Rebeca is total, as is that of her friends and classmates and catechists, or that of the neighbors of Granja de Rocamora, since Rebeca always had a reputation for holiness in life. The film will also serve to promote her beatification process, whose first miracle is already being studied in Rome. The film also offers original footage of Rebeca, along with unpublished documents and images of her family life and her experiences with her friends. Directed and written by José María Zavala (The Mystery of Padre Pio, Wojtyla. The Investigation, Dawn in Calcutta or Heaven Can’t Wait), the film once again features photography by academic Miguel Gilaberte (Velvet, Alta Mar, Ágora or the series The Envoys for Paramount Chanel). The Original Soundtrack (OST) is by Bruno Valenti, composer of Halkara, a film nominated for the 2024 Oscars, and the editing by Jordi Azategui, who has worked on the main films of the acclaimed director Isabel Coixet, the last of which, Love, she is one of the favorites for the 2024 Goya Awards.
