Doug Pullen of the El Paso Times talks with “Devils at Play” screenwriter James DiLapo. An excerpt …

“Set in 1937, “Devils at Play” revolves around Stepan, a detective with the NKVD, the Soviets’ secret police, whose discovery of a list of traitors could be his way out his morally bankrupt world.

“He struggles with whether he’s on the right track, whether he’s working for an evil faction, and in the course of that he uncovers a mystery,” Dilapo said by phone from Los Angeles.

“Devils” tells the story from the oppressor’s point of view, not the other way around. “When you look at this time period in history, the Soviets or the Nazis, it’s usually about what it’s like for the oppressed, not what it’s like to be on the other side,” the screenwriter explained.

“Devils at Play,” which Dilapo completed after graduation from New York University in 2011, looks at “how moral justification works in our heads, how we lie to ourselves to believe in what we’re doing, that capacity for good and evil,” he explained, adding that he looked to books like Robert Conquest’s “The Great Terror” for information and ideas.”

Keep reading in the El Paso Times.

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