Archivos intervenidos: Cine Escuela
Albertina Carri
María Alché
Juan Villegas
Celina Murga
Matías Piñeiro
Delfina Castagnino
Nicolás Prividera
Santiago Loza
José Celestino Campusano
Hernán Rosselli
Lorena Moriconi
Daniel Rosenfeld
Nele Wohlatz
Carlos Echeverría
Mateo Bendesky
Juan Pablo Menchón
Enrique Bellande
Also Directed by Albertina Carri
Albertina Carri wants to make a film about Isidro Velázquez, an almost mythical outlaw figure from northern Argentina who was shot dead by police in 1967. She’s not the only one interested in him: her sociologist father Roberto Carri wrote a book on him called “Pre-Revolutionary Forms of Violence” and a film was made about his story, although both father and film disappeared during the Dirty War. Legends, families, political alignments, cinema: none offer a stable foothold and Carri’s passage through them is like wandering a garden of forking paths, only to arrive at a landscape of cracked earth and thorns.
In 1977, when she was four years old, Albertina Carri's parents vanished without a trace, victims of Argentina's brutal military junta. In this fresh and politically daring film, the young Argentinian filmmaker attempts to unravel the mystery, piecing together her memories and fantasies in a quest to understand her parents' untimely fate.
A noir vision of a paranoid and dangerous Buenos Aires where a group of diverse Porteños are fatefully linked by a brutal killing.
An animated pornographic short film, starring the symbol of beauty and femininity in Western culture: the Barbie doll.
Sex, violence, betrayal and madness coalesce in this disturbing drama from Argentinean filmmaker Albertina Carri. Nati is a disturbed young girl living with her father Poldo and mother Alejandra in a remote, hardscrabble farming community. Nati, who cannot speak and strips off her clothes when she's angry, has few friends and has no one to play with besides Ladeado, the older son of Pichon, who works the neighboring farm. One of the reasons Nati is distraught is Alejandra has been having an affair with Pichon, and the two do little to hide their aggressive, sado-masochistic lovemaking from their children. Witnessing the brutal sex play between Alejandra and Pichon has also had a profound effect on Ladeado, who has taken to capturing and killing wild weasels. Nati begins drawing pictures depicting what she's seen her mother doing, and when Poldo gets a good look at them, he's determined to make his wife pay for her infidelity.
Stop-motion animation featuring Ken and Barbie dolls. Engaging in sexual (and some rather kinky) activities. Also some violence. The plot evolves around troubles in their marriage, due to Ken being a jerk. Will Barbie find happiness?
Aurora lives in the daily mix of furniture, norms and rules inherited from her parents from the 70s. A short film with still pictures and narration.
Thirteen short films directed by thirteen directors, based on the recitals of Argentino en Vivo 2.
Also Directed by María Alché
Mars is invaded by humans.
After a party, Agos and Ren find themselves in a strange place where they remember to have been before… A failed world bursting with dependences and doors leading to the same yet different place.
Marcela’s world becomes strange and unfamiliar after her sister Rina dies. She feels lost in her own house, and her relationship with her husband and children seems to suffer. But when Nacho, a young friend of her daughter’s, unexpectedly drops by, she starts to talk and walk with him. Gradually Marcela begins to have conversations with relatives from another dimension.
“What future are we in?” Asks one of the leading girls in the short film by María Alché, a memorable actress in the role of a holy girl in the film of the same name by Lucrecia Martel.
Seemingly abandoned, a young woman walks through the porous city of Buenos Aires with her camera, finding potential mothers at every turn.
Also Directed by Juan Villegas
A couple in a car, starting with a cigarette, begins a discussion as ridiculous as interesting. The lack of communication and lack of harmony, attributes that are exploited in love (or lack thereof).
One more Saturday in a desolate Buenos Aires hard to recognize. Six young people that try to avoid their solitude by complicating their daily routes, unsuccessfully looking for a glance that changes something or a new sensation that reveals them some sense. A couple used to their common tediousness, a girl who has already decided she wants to be alone, his boyfriend who does not know how to deal with that, a famous actor who does not seem to feel comfortable anywhere and a girl who pretends to get fun without realizing she's always bored.
Short movie about communications and our expectations.
By chance, Martin and Laura travel to Villa Gesell at the same time. They are not together anymore but 18 years ago they conceived their son, Pablo, there. Soon, situations as absurd as they are touching will arise from their encounter. Juan Villegas ventures into comedy and is back at Bafici with a nostalgic, intimate film.
Also Directed by Celina Murga
Twenty-something Ana, now living in Buenos Aires, returns to her native city of Paraná. She meets old school mates, old friends, makes new ones, and starts to rethink her life, and perhaps change her future.
Argentina short film
Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
Short movie about communications and our expectations.
Maria is a girl in her early teens whose family lives in an upscale gated suburb. Maria's parents are going out of town for a week, and rather than leave her with relatives or hire a babysitter, Maria is put in charge of looking after her little sister Sofia, with housekeeper Esther serving as a nominal adult authority figure, though for the most part she lets Maria and the others do what they please. With only their parents bedroom off-limits, Maria and Sofia have the run of the house, and soon they and their friends Facundo, Quique, Rodrigo and Timmy are spending their days exploring the place. As the kids begin creating their own rules to run counter to the ones their absent parents set down, Esther brings a young relative, Fernando, to play with them, and the privileged kids begin to get a notion of they ways of the outside world.
Student council elections are about to be held at a school in Parana, Argentina and the two main parties are putting the finishing touches to their campaigns. As they present their positions to the student body, all the elements of political grandstanding are present and correct: quibbling over slogans, circular rhetoric, the benefits of an attractive candidate and the inevitable final mudslinging.
Tensions rise when a doctor (Daniel Veronese) pressures his teenage son to follow in his footsteps.
Also Directed by Matías Piñeiro
Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.
A year after his father’s death, Victor returns to Buenos Aires in order to reconquer the life he was forced to abandon. He brings a new project with him for his former theater company: a radio-play of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost”.
Shot at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, In the Museum results from photographs taken with a nude painting during the director's previous feature, La Princesa de Francia. Six months after the filming, Matías Piñeiro returns to New York and realizes that he had taken with him the photographic camera that had supported the film and where are the photographs taken by the character Jimena (here, Gabi Saidón) in one of the scenes in the museum.
A group of girls and boys in their twenties settle in a country house that seems completely isolated from civilization. One of them writes a novel while the others try to become a gang and prepare a robbery; some fall in love, or seem to be, or believe (or say) they are in love. But these two, three, ten plot lines unfold from what the characters hide or just don’t know, connecting the writing of the novel and the forming of the gang, and the past of two of the characters with that of the house, and of those who perhaps were the two most bitter enemies of nineteenth century Argentine history.
Matías Piñeiro's first film, produced when he was a film student.
Mariel wants to play Isabella in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”. With the support of Luciana, who is also an actress, she has already rehearsed the part. But during the audition, Mariel realises that Luciana is trying out for the same role.
Also Directed by Delfina Castagnino
Pilar lives in the south. She recently lost her father and is now on her own. María came to visit her, to keep her company and take a break from the boyfriend she's on the point of leaving. Neither has the wherewithal to comfort the other. Neither knows what they want. They barely know what they don't want. They don't want to go back to their lives. They don't want to think about the future. They don't want to be alone. They don't want their holiday to end. A timber yard about to close, a horse and a dog, a few men, a little alcohol and the cold waters of the southern lakes.
Without a doubt, Angélica is having a crisis. Her mother died recently, she has to empty out her childhood home because it is going to be demolished, she doesn’t seem to have gotten over her split with her ex, and she is about to turn 40. Without any idea about how to deal with any of these things, she escapes to the past: she secretly hides in her childhood home and, while the walls fall around her, reality becomes hazy. Hidden in her house, that is both a shelter and a trap, bit by bit Angélica loses herself, fusing with her mother. Delfina Castagnino creates an elliptical and sinister tale, sowed with disturbing sounds and shadows, a film in which a framing, a musical note or a camera movement can transform peeling wallpaper into a threat, or the projection of a slide image into a ghost. And so what could be a family drama becomes a psychological thriller: Angélica turns mourning into a tale of horror.
Also Directed by Nicolás Prividera
Fatherland brings a rigorous structural approach to a site of monuments that is also a place of movement, criss-crossed daily by tourists and locals. The grounds are laid out like city blocks, with wide avenues branching onto laneways filled with elaborate mausoleums. The film does not attempt to tour the cemetery as one would on foot, however, but rather moves chronologically through the history enshrined there. A series of individuals are framed in static compositions as they read aloud excerpts from the writings of noteworthy Argentines interred within. (Some license has been taken, as the final resting places of certain figures represented - such as journalist Rodolfo Walsh, who was among the "disappeared" - remain unknown. The result is both poetic and political.) Beginning in the early 1800s, this history comprises civil war, battles with the country's native population, the conflict between the city and the provinces, and years of military dictatorship.
Also Directed by Santiago Loza
An unlikely relationship forms between two young patients in a hospital.
Tania learns that her grandmother spent the last years of her life in the loving company of an alien. Together with two friends, the Trans woman travels through rural Argentina to bring the creature back to its place of origin.
Three women travel to a distant place to do welfare work. They assist, listen, stay with the unprotected. An old hospital in ruins accommodates them. The imposed group life gets more complex as they start to know each other. The relationship with the others, the community, is also difficult. But, as days go by, they will start to melt into that human landscape surrounding them. To be part of the mystery of otherness.
The protagonist is Axel, aged about 40, a doctor who no longer practices his craft. He is living temporarily with his sister and her children. He doesn't do much, just exists a little between the living and their things. One day, he meets a young, pregnant woman. A relationship develops, a kind of love, and they live together, like driftwood temporarily clinging on to each other.
La Paz is the story of Liso, a young man who emerges from a psychiatric institution and tries to re-adapt to daily life in the universe of his middle class family and neighborhood. Though everything seems difficult, under the surface and very subtly things start to change for him.
Dignified, strong and formidable, and oozing erotic attraction: young malambo dancer Gaspar is at one with his passion for dance that he has made his profession.
Actors gather in an unknown French city for a 1-month workshop.
The dance of the cuartetos with Carlos Giménez, the people who love him, the people who do not love him, the joy of the meeting and the emptiness of a party finale.
Also Directed by José Celestino Campusano
Brooklyn Experience is an immersive drama that explores the daily lives of a dysfunctional white family as they go through the current US immigration crackdown.
Biker groups' love of motorcycles and travelling free on the roads is much more than just a hobby for disenfranchised men and women; what shapes them is a secret ancestral memory, as suggested in the interviews at bikers' parties.
A dirty cop tries to fix the mess he's made of his work and his life when he finds out he is terminally ill.
José Celestino Campusano continues his task of exploring territories that haven’t yet been covered much by Argentine cinema, but with which, film after film, he managed to configure his own universe. This time, the prolific filmmaker traveled to the locality of Gálvez, in the province of Santa Fe, in order to collect town life experiences and, with them, shape his new feature. The Naked Queen is the result of this journey.
Antonio Molina is a criminal in decline that tries to regain the respect for friendship and commitment, at any cost.
Roberto is a bored young man living in the suburbs of Buenos Aires who begins a relationship with an older man named Raúl. Their romance takes a disturbing turn after Raúl catches Roberto with another man and turns increasingly abusive.
A microscopic tale about the trafficking of women, from the viewpoint of Campusano's universe. Including Vikingo and his bikers, who try to rescue Antonella, who has been kidnapped and sold to a brothel in northern Argentina. A rigorous narration with several subplots in which the narrative craft of this director gets to shine fully.
Based on a true story of sexual abuse between siblings.
Also Directed by Hernán Rosselli
Mauro roams around the city buying things. Anything, no matter what. Because Mauro is a "passador", a man who exchanges fake bills. Marcela, who got pregnant recently, and Luis live together. Luis and Mauro decide to set up a little printing house to produce counterfeit money. At night, Mauro exchanges the money in bars and discotheques. He moves discreetly, always alone - until he meets Paula...
A film about an institution called "House of Theater", which lodged retired and forgotten artists and is the home of Oscar, a convalescing actor who longs to reunite with his son.
Also Directed by Daniel Rosenfeld
A father and his son. Sky and earth. A camera and something very hard to film: faith.
A cinematic portrait of the world-wide legendary Argentinian composer who changed tango. For the first time ever, the hidden archives of bandoneón player Astor Piazzolla are opened by his son Daniel.
Also Directed by Nele Wohlatz
The couple from the countryside is siting there, and tells all about their love. The man talks about how he met her; the woman talks about how they split up. The countryside was keeping its most hidden secret.
An ecologist from Germany and her filmmaker daughter who lives in Argentina meet in Cuba to film a documentary on snails. The mother has worked for years helping her colleagues in Cuba protect the polymita picta snails, which are facing extinction. She has her own ideas on how to make the documentary and the daughter follows her lead. However, when the authorities ban the shooting, the course of the film changes: it is no longer about the snails, but they themselves become the protagonists.
Archival footage of Argentinian skiers is transposed into prompts for language exercises.
A smart and innovative look at the possible futures of a young Chinese immigrant to Buenos Aires, told in the stilted language of an elementary Spanish textbook.
Ricardo Bar (22) is a young man who lives with his family in a little farm, in the border of Brazil and Argentina. There is mainly the jungle and the settlers, descendants of German immigrants. Ricardo doesn't want to inherit his father's land; he wants to become a pastor. Problems begin when Ricardo and the community tell the directors to stop shooting and leave. From that moment on Ricardo Bar tells two stories: one about a deal, the directors' offer to Ricardo in order to be able to shoot the film, and the other about Ricardo's life at this moment, his reaction to the director's offer, reenacted for the camera.
Also Directed by Carlos Echeverría
In the forties, Erich Priebke, a former Nazi SS commander hides in Bariloche, Argentina . The German community of Bariloche lives conditioned by the spirit of the Third Reich and supports Priebke despite knowing the crimes he has committed.
Documentary about the detention-dissapearance of Juan Marcos Herman in the city of Bariloche during the Dirty War in Argentina
The old urban bus leaves from a Pampean town to Patagonia. A group of shearers made up mostly of Corrientes travels with someone else, who only appears in the film through his omnipresent voice. In addition to living with the shearers, the narrator addresses a fictitious addressee, telling him everything that they are going through during that six-month journey.
The movie follows a group of children living in the streets in the city of Buenos Aires. The only day center working is the CAINA (Centro de Atención Integral a la Niñez y Adolescencia) an institution that assists and shelters street children.
Also Directed by Mateo Bendesky
In "Spaces #2", 7 internationally acclaimed directors shot, after commissioning by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, a short film at home, making their own timely comment on the new reality that we live in. The project is inspired by the book "Species of Spaces" by the French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist, Georges Perec and the days of quarantine. The idea is to create a film at home, using the environment, the people or the animals in that space. The only outdoor areas that may be used are outdoor living spaces, such as the terrace, the garden, the balcony and the stairwell. "These Days" is Mateo Bendesky's submission.
Body-obsessed teenager Lucas and his mystically-inclined older sister, Gilda, unexpectedly become stranded when they travel to a nearly deserted coastal town to try to fulfill their dead mother's last wishes in whatever way they can.
This is not exactly a biopic about the famous comedian, champion of prank calls; is a film about Jorge, a clumsy and shy office worker who stutters when speaking in public and doesn't know how to approach the girl he likes. But Jorge is also, as those who know him well know, a faithful and very funny friend. And when one day, by chance, he ends up being the subject of a hypnosis session, he discovers that he has a new ability: to pick up the phone and become the irreverent Doctor Tangalanga to make those who need him laugh.
Débora is 11 years old and is deaf. Facundo, her brother, is 18 and doesn't want her to grow up. Together, they have fun setting cars on fire while their father is away, until one day things slip out of control.
Inside David’s lives a troubled, doubtful, neurotic young man.
Aldo is 55 years old and lives with Pablo, his older brother. From their home, they conduct a religious practice invented by their father and whose congregation meets mainly online. Aldo is tired of being a preacher, but doesn’t know how to say it.