A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Featuring:
Ofelia Almeida, Oscar Ruiz Almeida, Jesus de la Torre
Written by:
Lourdes Portillo
Directed by:
Lourdes Portillo
Release Date:
September 13, 1994
Original Title:
El diablo nunca duerme
Genres:
Documentary
Production Countries:
Mexico | United States of America
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 82
The Devil Never Sleeps is a “whodunit” documentary about family secrets. Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo received a phone call informing her of the mysterious death of her wealthy Mexican uncle Oscar. Officially ruled a suicide, Portillo’s relatives claimed murder, offering several possible suspects including a business partner, a ranch hand, and Oscar’s young widow who stood to inherit everything. Traveling to Mexico, Portillo attempts to learn the truth about her powerful uncle. Using interviews, old snapshots and home movies, she finds a complicated web of family secrets, intrigue, rumor and betrayal that makes her enigmatic uncle’s murder seem ever more likely, yet ever more obscure. As the Mexican saying goes, “When evil is lurking, the devil never sleeps.”
Oscar is found dead from a gunshot wound, whose wife believes he committed suicide. His nephew, Portillo, suspects that it was murder and investigates the death with no help from the authorities.
Internet Movie Database | 6.8/10 |
---|---|
Rotten Tomatoes | 80% |
Awards Won: | 2 wins & 1 nomination |
Director:
Lourdes Portillo
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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.