1922

Dir: Martín Mauregui

Prod: Agustina Llambi Campbell y Fernando Brom

Country: Argentina / Francia / Alemania

In 1921, the Argentine Army travels to Patagonia in order to push back a union strike. More than a thousand workers are shot dead. Two of them manage to escape. One of them is “the Old One,” the other is “the Young One,” and they don’t know each other. In New Year’s Eve, they find shelter from the storm in a precarious ranch in the middle of nowhere. Both of them are anarchists, both of them are running from the army and, together, they embark on a trip with the hope of crossing the mountains to Chile. During the week the story takes place in –the first week of 1922–, the getaway is transformed by the brutal irruption of fiction and adventure: the Widow, the Indians, the Aristocrat, the Landowner, the beginnings of cinema, Marx’s Suicidal Daughters, psychedelic drugs, the Avenging Whores, thepoisoned whales, the Monster Worker… Meanwhile, two men without names try to get to know each other.

To the Desert

Dir: Ulises Rosell

Prod: Ezequiel Borovinsky y Alejandro Israel

Country: Argentina

Dusty, fenced by thirst, dressed in their best outfits, Julia and Armando walk across the Patagonian desert. The hunt, start fires and sleep out in the open. Slowly, that outdoor captivity turns into a survival test. With no chance of escape in the middle of infinite distances, Julia keeps going over how they got there. Has it always been a premeditated plan? How could she not have suspected anything during their first encounter, when he introduced himself as a worker at a company that was being set up and asked to accompany her to a job interview? Could it be possible that the kidnapping was a consequence of a delusion from Armando due to the van’s rollover? Even though the answers make sense to sheriff Prieto, who’s in charge of the investigation, they will soon stop making sense to Julia. After all, why would that unexpected and intense life be less desirable than the one she led weeks before, when she was working as a waitress at the casino of an oil city?

António One Two Three

Dir: Leonardo Mouramateus

Prod: Gustavo Beck

Country: Brazil / Portugal

One: When António, a Portuguese young guy, runs away from home, he spends the night at his ex-girlfriend’s apartment. The next morning, he meets a new guest, a young Brazilian girl named Débora. Two: A theater director, Johnny, stages his first play in Portugal. He finds in the gaffer, António, the help to tell the story of a young boy who ran away from home. Three: When Débora goes to the theater to see an adaptation of a Russian tale, she sees a young actor, António, who seems to be looking at her in the eye.

The Perfect Future (Working title)

Dir: Nele Wohlatz

Prod: Cecilia Salim

Country: Argentina

Xiaobin, a young Chinese immigrant in Buenos Aires, looks for a path to cross the contradictions she faces in her new everyday life. Her parents want her to marry a well-off Chinese man and live isolated from society, like them. When Xiaobin arrives in Argentina, she doesn’t speak a word of Spanish. However, a few days later she already has a new name, Beatriz, and her first job at a supermarket. Behind her parents’ back, she starts a new parallel life that includes a Spanish school and a romance with Vijay, an I.T. engineer from India. With the Spanish lessons, the film deploys a playful narrative structure. We accompany Xiaobin in the process of adaptation to her new country. In order to experience it, the film combines documentary elements and a fictionalized reenactment of Xiaobin since her arrival in Buenos Aires. Xiaobin also uses the film as a rehearsal room to test other possible futures. She writes different endings for the film, inventing different outcomes for her conflict with her parents, but all of them end up tragically. She intervenes the script of the film about her life during that crucial moment when she reinvents her new self.

Elon Doesn’t Believe in Death

Dir: Ricardo Alves Jr.

Prod: Thiago Macêdo Correia and Michael Wahrmann

Country: Brazil

Elon’s wife, Madalena, hasn’t come back home from work. Elon waits and gets worried. He starts retracing Madalena’s daily routes. He searches for her at her workplace, her family’s and friend’s houses. He gets more and more desperate. No one has any clue about her whereabouts. The morning after, Elon goes to the police station, files a report and visits hospitals and morgues looking for her, expecting the worst. This is a pivotal moment in Elon’s life. Alone, he wanders around Belo Horizonte looking for any kind of news about the sudden and mysterious disappearance of his wife. Every inch of space, all objects and bodies remind him of Madalena. Her invisibility lies in the visible. Elon’s gaze seems lost in dark figures, in shadows, in faces in the crowd. Everything around him takes on a new form, and both Elon and the others start asking new questions and having new doubts. Elon is fired from work and acts violently in despair. He’s losing it. The world around him now seems like a strange place. Reality deceives Elon, and he stays in denial. He insists and continues his search. He feels pain, but can he deceive reality?

Fin de semana

Dir: Moroco Colman

Prod: Sofía Castells

Country: Argentina

Carla arrives to accompany Martina after years of absence. The relationship between them is distant, there’s something they don’t talk about; maybe guilt or a grudge stands in their way. Martina has furtive encounters with Diego, a man twice her age. Both of them submit to a strong, out-of-control sexual game. In the margins of the lake, volunteer neighbors collect trash from the shore; there, Carla witnesses a strange situation between and Diego. Later, she stealthily follows Diego and confronts him. When Martina finds out, she gets furious, she has an argument with Carla, and leaves home. Carla escapes to a night of sex and excess. When she returns home, Martina finds her in terrible shape and helps her get into bed. The day after, something has changed between them.

Los decentes

Dir: Lukas Valenta Rinner

Prod: Ana Godoy

Country: Argentina / Austria / Korea

Belén, a 30-year-old woman, lands a job as a live-in maid in an exclusive private neighborhood in the province of Buenos Aires. There, she discovers what life is like in this community: the inspections when entering and exiting the place, the wide empty streets where the maximum speed is 30 km/h and the neat calm of this enclosed space. Every weekend she goes on dates with Garita, one of the security guards. Together, they walk around suburban spaces: an old amusement park, a themed motel, et cetera. Belén discovers that beyond the fence that protects the private neighborhood is a strange world; she hears the music coming from this unknown place and decides to go and see what it’s about. She discovers a space of thick vegetation and isolated structures that do not appear to be useful. It is a nudist club where some people walk around relaxed, others have sex, make barbecue or simply read. Little by little, Belén starts becoming part of this new world, and spends more and more time there. The tension between the neighborhood and the nudist club grow exponentially, while Belén moves between these two contradicting worlds heading for a tragic outcome.

The Territories

Dir: Iván Granovsky

Prod: Ezequiel Pierri y Jerónimo Quevedo

Country: Argentina / Brazil / Chile / Palestine

The world has changed. Terrorism and refugee politics are no longer the same. Neither is the economy. Nothing seems to make sense. And nothing seems useful: neither being a journalist nor a traveler. After the attack on Charlie Hebdo, a young Argentine man decides to use his savings to travel to Europe and play journalist. At the same time, a close friend leaves his job as a war correspondent and becomes the editor of the International section of a magazine. A new world for the traveler: sinister and magical landscapes, fleeting romances, Champions League matches, monuments, hotels, planes ships and trains. A new world for the editor: the house, the editorial office, the inflatable pool, Saturday with friends, transcribing interviews and surfing the Google Maps Street View. Through interviews with Varoufakis, Camila Vallejo, Lula, the Breaking the Silence organization, former ETA members, or Pocho Lavezzi, the new worlds these characters move around in helps them to comprehend the incomprehensible: the political, economic and social chaos of the last few years.

Soldier

Dir: Manuel Abramovich

Prod: Gema Juárez Allen and Alejandra Grinschpun

Country: Argentina

Soldier is an initiation story in which we attend the transformation of a young man into a soldier. After turning 19, Juan shaves his head and leaves his hometown in Corrientes in order to travel to Buenos Aires and join the Army, like many other young men from the region who see in that path the chance of getting a job, having economic stability and helping their families. A psychologist asks him why he wants to join the Army: “because I want to experience something new,” he answers. In spite of having no musical training, he is assigned a position as a drummer soldier musician in the Tambor de Tacuarí military orchestra, one of the oldest and most important in the country, based in the Patricios Regiment. From that day on, his life changes: Juan turns into “Soldado González.” In the army, he starts being a teenager and starts behaving like a man, a soldier. His new routine combines military training and music rehearsals. At the beginning, he goes through his new life filled with uncertainties and contradictions. His physical exhaustion and the military stiffness play against him, and can’t seem to get used to the city’s noise and overpopulation, until he gains more skill in music and, through it, finds a space of freedom and enjoyment inside a world of strict rules.

Dark Skull

Dir: Kiro Russo

Prod: Pablo Paniagua

Country: Bolivia

After the death of his father, Elder Mamani must replace him in his workplace at the mine. Until then, his life was aimless, devoted to alcohol and his own madness. The one endorsing his work at the mine with him is Francisco, his godfather. However, Elder’s behavior causes tension among the group of miners and puts his godfather in deep trouble. After diverse tests, Elder Mamani is allowed to travel with other miners to the locality Coroico for a vacation. There, the deep rift that exists between elder and his godfather Francisco is solved in an unexpected way.

27 de April de 2016