José Cabeza
THREE MILLION MINUTES
Based on the film script 7 Years (7 años)
Psychological thriller

About the play:

A psychological thriller that takes place in one room, at a table with a chessboard set up, adapted for MGL by Barbara Hieng Samobor. The director converted the years from the title into minutes, and above all, cast women in all five roles. The theme of sexism, which is very unambiguous in the original, recedes into the background in the Slovenian adaptation – but only at first glance.

The play Three Million Minutes, based on the script for the film and play 7 Years (7 años) by José Cabeza, was adapted by director Barbara Hieng Samobor, who composed the cast entirely of women – which is a special quality of the adaptation – while in the original, four men and one woman perform. Four female friends are long-term partners and founders of a successful company. In addition to success and many memories, they also share a “business secret”. For a long time, they have been keeping double books: transferring money to an account in Switzerland and thus evading taxes. The leader among them suddenly learns that they are being followed by the financial police and that agents may request access to computers and other documents at any moment. A lawyer offers them a solution: if one of the partners transfers the concealed profit to herself, the guilt will fall only on her. The one who sacrifices herself will go to prison for the planned seven years and save the remaining three, and thus the company. The distressed quartet hires a mediator who should help them reach a (co)reasonable choice. Elements of a corporate thriller and a crime drama turn into a tense game of their psychologies during the mediation.

The film 7 Years was produced by Netflix in 2016 and was the first film that the mentioned platform shot in Spanish. The author of the original work, José Cabeza, is a professor of screenwriting at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid. After the film’s success, several theatrical adaptations followed.