‘El Inca’ Director on Legal Battle to Tell Edwin Valero’s Story: ‘In Venezuela, Everything Is Political’

Venezuela’s Oscar submission, which dramatizes boxing icon’s tragic life, is banned in the country’s theaters

"El Inca" Q&A with director Ignacio Castillo Cottin and producer Nathalie Sir-Sharlom held at the Landmark Theatre and hosted by The Wrap.
"El Inca" Q&A with director Ignacio Castillo Cottin and producer Nathalie Sir-Sharlom held at the Landmark Theatre and hosted by The Wrap.

Edwin “El Inca” Valero was a Venezuelan icon, an undefeated, two-weight boxing world champion and a ferocious fighter who won all but one of his fights by knockout. But in 2010 he was arrested on suspicion of killing his wife and took his own life in prison. After that, the filmmakers behind his life story, “El Inca,” says his cultural legacy virtually vanished.

Director Ignacio Castillo Cottin spent years researching Valero, uncovering what he calls “this love story, which I think is tragic, dramatic and incredible love story worthy to make a film of it.” What he didn’t expect upon telling that story was how unearthing the past of a complicated, tortured individual would spark a legal controversy in Venezuela.

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