News

Films by Carolina Markowicz, Isabel Coixet, Jaione Camborda and Isabel Herguera all have international potential.

Highly anticipated features from Isabel Coixet, Lucía Puenzo and Jaione Camborda are among the buzziest Spanish and Latin American titles screening across all strands of this year’s San Sebastián film festival. Here is a flavour of what festival audiences can expect.

Blondi (Argentina)

Dir: Dolores Fonzi

The debut feature from Argentinian actress Dolores Fonzi plays in the Horizontes Latinos section, which screens premieres entirely or partially produced in Latin America and not yet released in Spain. Fonzi also stars in the film which is...

Buenos Aires — Argentina’s Lucía Puenzo, one of Latin America’s most sought-after writer-directors, is in talks with Mariana di Girolamo, star of Pablo Larraín’s “Ema,” and Marcelo Alonso for both to star in feature “Impactados.”

Both actors have expressed their interest in appearing in the film, said Puenzo, which she will pitch to potential co-producers at Ventana Sur Proyecta Forum on Dec. 4.

There, it bids fare to be one of the pitching session’s highlights given its pedigree production – Argentina’s Historias Cinematográficas, the Puenzo family production house led by Academy Award-winning Luis Puenzo, Juan de Dios Larraín at Chile’s Fabula and Stéphane Parthenay at France’s Pyramide Productions – and Puenzo’s own caché as one of Latin America’s very few film directors whose films can open theatrically to significant box office outside Latin America.

Di Girolamo and Alonso played in the acclaimed Fabula-Fremantle-produced and Puenzo showrun TV series “La Jauría.

Lucia Puenzo to direct from screenplay by Ann Cherkis (Better Call Saul).

Jessica Chastain will star in the comedic drama Losing Clementine that Argentinian filmmaker Lucia Puenzo will direct and Sierra/Affinity will introduce to international buyers at Afm this week.

Better Call Saul screenwriter Ann Cherkis adapted the story from the novel of the same name by Ashley Ream about a celebrated artist who ditches her medications and has one month to tie up loose ends, only to uncover tragic secrets about her family.

Italia Film-based Sentient’s Renee Tab acquired the book last year, developed the script,...

Jessica Chastain will star in the comedy-drama “Losing Clementine” from award-winning Argentine filmmaker Lucia Puenzo.

“Better Call Saul” scribe Ann Cherkis is penning the script.

“Losing Clementine” is adapted from Ashley Ream’s acclaimed novel of the same name. Sentient’s Renee Tab acquired the book last year, during which time she developed the script, packaged the project and raised the financing. Tab will produce with her partner Christopher Tuffin alongside Freckle Films’ Chastain and Kelly Carmichael. Miller Way’s Michael and Jeeny Miller will executive produce alongside Sentient’s Jake Martin and Maryam Lieberman, and Cherkis.

The story follows world-renowned artist Clementine Pritchard (Chastain) who, after flushing away her meds, gives herself 31 days to tie up loose ends before killing herself. While checking off her bucket list, she uncovers secrets about her family and the tragedy that befell her mother and sister.

Sierra/Affinity will launch international sales of...

Another hot American Film Market package being unveiled today: Jessica Chastain will play a troubled artist in comedy-drama Losing Clementine. Argentine filmmaker Lucía Puenzo has been enlisted to helm the feature, which Sierra/Affinity will be shopping at the Santa Monica market this week.

As we revealed last year, Sentient Entertainment’s Renee Tab picked up feature rights to Ashley Ream’s debut novel of the same name and brought Better Call Saul writer and producer Ann Cherkis onboard to adapt the screenplay.

Pic follows world-renowned and sharp-tongued artist Clementine Pritchard (Chastain) who has decided she’s done. After flushing away her meds, she gives herself 31 days to tie up loose ends. While checking off her bucket list she uncovers secrets about her family and the tragedy that befell her mother and sister.

Sentient president Tab, who recently exec produced the Jennifer Garner thriller Peppermint, developed, packaged, raised finance and...

Fictionalized history in any artistic expression differs from the theories created by revisionists to carve out a narrative that fits their beliefs. Cinematic reinterpretations often, as they should, focus on the characters’ human condition, those emotions or personal plights that never make it to the history books. Audiences and artists are fascinated with the intrigues, romances, and other dramatic situations involving important figures. Despite their unique lives, they are humans beings subjected to the same fears and hopes that everyone else, the historical background just adds to the allure. In these terms is how Argentine director Lucía Puenzo approached her story about a real-life villain and his interactions with the world. Based on the myths and speculation surrounding notorious Nazi physician Josef Mengele, The German Doctor aims to put a face to his evil not in a simplistic manner but with all the complexities that form part of a multifaceted identity. Puenzo shared with us her motivation to write the novel that would turn into this film, the role history played in her creative process, and her opinion on why the myth of a disturbed Nazi doctor is still powerful today.

Read the review Here

Read the Case Study on the film by Sydney Levine

Carlos Aguilar: This story, The German Doctor, existed first as a novel you wrote, and not it is your film. What was the central idea that interested you?

Lucia Puenzo: The novel emerged first as a tale of a family that crossed paths in the desert route with this German man. From the beginning, what interested me this family and the protagonist, the teenage girl, more than Mengele. He is such a powerful character historically, as powerful as Nazism itself, so these subjects always tend to be the protagonists. What I think is that despite this historical references, Wakolda or The German Doctor is a very intimate story. It is the story of a teenage girl and the way she falls in love with a monster. It is the story of a hunt and of a seduction.

Aguilar: What kind of research was involved to develop this novel that needs great historical context?

Lucia: There was a lot of research, years even. It took a year and a half to write the novel, but the research wasn’t the initial thing that occurred to me. In general, even if I’m dealing with a historical subject, I begin with invention rather than investigation, because I need to understand what is going to be the voice or the tone of the story. Whose point of view is it? Who is telling it?“ How is this character telling it? Therefore, I started writing before doing any research to understand the tone of the novel. It was a novel that needed all this information that I started gathering. While I was writing I was reading books on the subjects, meeting with documentarians and historians, all of who provided me with an immense amount of facts that ended up in the novel and eventually the film. An example is the inclusion of Nora Eldoc, the volunteer for the Mossad.

Aguilar: Did you know you wanted to turn this story into a film from the moment you started writing the novel?

Puenzo: At first I didn’t think about it at all, I didn’t write the novel thinking it would become a film. In the case of my second film The Fish Child (El Niño Pez), I had written the novel about 5 years before I made into a film. In the case of The German Doctor I had published the novel a year before I started writing the script, I even had another project to shoot. But I had this idea of the powerful cinematic language from the novel that I couldn’t let go of. When I started writing the script I thought that maybe someone else would direct it, but then I started to fall for it so much that I left the other project and I put all my time on The German Doctor.

Aguilar: It seems as if the chapter in history about the Nazis escaping to South America is often forgotten, or not amply discussed. Were you trying to revisit these events after the war?

Puenzo: Much more than trying to focus on the battlefield of the war, it was the central place that German doctors occupied within Nazism, the omnipotent and insane idea of wanting to generically modify an entire nation. This idea was not on the outskirts of Nazi ideology, it was the heart of movement, that’s what intrigued me. Mengele is the most extreme expression of this idea.

Aguilar: There is a fantastic analogy your film makes between the mass production f porcelain dolls and Mengele’s deranged plans. Did this come from any historical material or was it completely fictional?

Puenzo: That was one of those facts that emerged while I was doing my research. I was reading books about the Nazi presence not only in Argentina, but all over Latin America, and time and after time this information would come up. Mengele had something to do with these types of dolls, the stories say that he made them and gave them away to his friends as symbols of Nazism in exile. They also say this maybe was because he worked at a toy store. There were many of these stories. When I would ask different historians about these, all of them said that it is all part of a myth. There was a myth circulating among many historians that assured them this really happened. However, this is just a myth, no one will ever know for certain, no one ever saw those dolls with certainty, there are no photographs. For me, just the fact that this story exists is such a vicious and poisonous idea. To think he kept on trying to manipulate other bodies is disturbing, so much that I included in the novel and then in the film.

Aguilar: You seem to be attacked to stories about human physiology, not only here, but also with your previous film Xxy, about a hermaphrodite finding her physical and emotional identity.

Puenzo: Evidently this does attract me, if I said no it would be incongruent with the films I’m making [Laughs]. But it is not something I decide consciously. When I wrote Wakolda at first I wasn’t conscious that I was writing about something so close to or that had so many similar elements with Xxy. It was just after I was done writing that I noticed it. I think both teenagers in each film have many similarities, and Mengele is the extreme version of the plastic surgeon in Xxy. Both stories definitely have several ideas connecting them.

Aguilar: You mention that one the ideas that intrigued the most was the family’s vulnerability in particular the parents. Why is that?

Puenzo: The parents intrigued me in a very special way. They remind me of films like Sophie's Choice, how does someone react while having to make such a terrible decision: having a monster in front of you proposing something revolting, but that at the same time it could save your child. The parents in my film had very different perspectives. The mother comes from German parents, and although she doesn’t have an openly Nazi ideology, she was raised in that environment and she ends up trusting this man [Mengele], more than her husband. He is suspicious of the doctor’s motives because he belongs to a different world.

Aguilar: How difficult was it to find the perfect actor to bring Mengele to life and to an extent humanize him?

Puenzo: The casting process was extremely difficult. It was a character that needed the actor to speak Spanish and German, look alike physically, be able to act the part, and it had to be someone we could pay for. Our film required someone that would support the project fully and beyond the financial aspects. Àlex Brendemühl did it with much excitement. I sent him a picture of Mengele, then I called him and I told him they really looked alike and that he had to play this character. He immediately agreed. It was clear from the novel, and now in the film, that we didn’t want to fall in the stereotype of a “simply evil” character. We didn’t want a villain that you can see coming from miles away because he has written on his forehead how bad he is. It wasn’t the case here, because these men were very complex. They were psychopaths that camouflaged and penetrated our societies like in The Plague by Albert Camus, they were in every corner but no one noticed them.

Aguilar: Despite being a film set against the backdrop of important historical events, it still feels very engaging in an intimate way. How has the film been received by audiences?

Puenzo: Absolutely, I think that even though The German Doctor (Wakolda) is placed in a historical context like this, it is a very intimate story. It is basically four characters inside a hotel. That’s how the story is resolved, that’s how the story was conceived, and that was what grabbed me, more than the historical context. The film has been extremely well received around the world. It keeps on going around, opening in different markets, and connecting with the audience. In Argentina it was seen by over 450, 000 spectators, which is way more than anything we could have imagined. It also connected with very young audiences as well, teenagers and people in their 20s, which we also didn’t expect.

Aguilar: When we published our review for the film back when it was in contention for the Academy Award nomination, we received a couple of comments by people claiming that Mengele was still alive hiding somewhere, their claims seems very vivid, but of course surreal. Why do you think these fantastical stories exist?

Puenzo: This is a character that lived 30 years running away from the Mossad, which was always hot on his heels in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. They never captured him, and he probably died without ever being found, this lends itself for these kinds of conspiracy theories and myths. We can only hope that he died in a prison like many other Nazis that were extradited, and not at the beach in Brazil. He is a character that lends itself to these intriguing stories because they never found him.

Aguilar: The original title of the film is Wakolda, which if I’m not mistaken comes from the indigenous people of the region, how does it relate to the story?

Puenzo. Yes, it’s a Mapuche name. The Mapuche are our indigenous people from the south, the Patagonia. They are a vey wise and luminous ancient cavitation, which is completely opposite to where Nazism was headed. In the novel, the theme of racial purity and the Nazi obsession with it was much more developed.

Aguilar: How did you work with you young actress, Florencia Bado, who played Lilith, given that this is a rather dark tale in which a strange bond between her and the doctor is formed?

Puenzo: We took very good care of her. She was 12 years old when we shot the film, this is her first movie, and she had never even taken an acting class. María Laura Berch, our casting director, and I, we understood that she needed to be taken care of. She didn’t read the script, her parents read it and agreed for her to be in the film. We told her little by little what the story was about. We made sure that she was comfortable and reassure her that we would take care of her. It was a very happy shoot; we went to film on location in Bariloche. We all stayed together in the same hotel where we filmed.

Aguilar: Luis Puenzo, your father, who won the Academy Award for his film The Official Story, how has he influenced your career as a filmmaker?

Puenzo: I’m completely surrounded, not only my father, but also my three brothers, and Sergio, my husband, all four of them work in film. Some are writers, or directors, or cinematographers, all of them. I’m surrounded by men that make films, so much that at some point I felt there was no more room in the family for another filmmaker. For many years I was only working as novelist or writing screenplays for others to direct. In terms of my father, if you have 4 children that work in film, then there certainly was a happy, positive influence from him because none us became an accountant. [Laughs].

The German Doctor opens in L.A. and New York on April 25th, 2014...

#84. Lucia Puenzo’s Wakolda

Gist: Starring Alex Brendemuhl, Natalia Oreiro, Diego Peretti and Elena Roger, this is based on Puenzo’s own novel detailing the true story of an Argentine family who lived with Josef Mengele without knowing his true identity, and of a girl who fell in love with one of the biggest criminals of all times.

Prediction: Un Certain Regard. Despite Lucía Puenzo making waves when she had Xxy unfold in 2007′s Critics’ Week, by appearances, Wakolda might have a a narrower chance of showing in Cannes as this stylistically looks too mainstream for the Directors’ Fortnight. In between films she premiered El niño pez (2009) in Berlin and this 2013 feature is set to be released in Argentina less than a week before the Croisette opens for business.

prev next...

While The Fish Child is pitched as something of a younger, sexier “Argentine Thelma and Louise”, the reality is that it’s several shades darker; with more death and sexual violence then you’ll see in about twelve other queer films with the same general level of drama. Don’t let that stop you, however – this is a special film, about an adolescent lesbian love affair that is so much more, personal tragedy and the real meaning of family. It’s not always an easy watch, but director Lucia Puenzo (who is adapting the story from her own novel) has crafted something that is worlds away from the majority of lesbian-oriented cinema.

Lala (Ines Efron) is an upper-class girl living with her famous father – an author and judge - her addiction-addled brother, and her elegant, world-traveling mother in a beautiful Buenos Aires estate. She’s pixie-ish and beautiful, carrying on...

Wakolda is a period psychological thriller directed by Lucia Puenzo Puenzo which France's Pyramide Productions and Spain's Wanda Films have boarded, reports Variety. The follow-up to The Fish Child is being lead-produced by Argentina's Historias Cinematografias and written by Puenzo. Shooting starts late fall for the film set in in 1959-60 which follows Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, notorious for his horrific experiments on Auschwitz inmates, who shacks up at a boarding house in a lakeside village in Patagonia, run by a family. The family knows nothing about him and their daughter ends up falling under Mengele's spell.

Ghosted (Directed by Monica Treut and written by Astrid Stroner), It Came From Kuchar by Jennifer Kroot, and El Niño Pez (The Fish Child) are stand-out genre films by women playing at the 2009 Outfest Film Festival.

These award-winning women directors deal with subjects like murder, revenge, twisted love, unsolved murders, and the absolutely awesome B-movie industry in their films...

Writer-director Lucía Puenzo won awards - including two prizes at Cannes - and critical acclaim all over the world for Xxy, and now the Argentine filmmaker returns with a lesbian romance that’s also a Chabrol-esque mystery thriller and a scathing examination of class differences in the South American nation. Lala (Inés Efron, whose performance has inspired comparisons to the early film roles of both Sissy Spacek and Chloë Sevigny), the privileged daughter of a powerful judge, wants to run off with her Paraguayan lover La Guayi (Mariela Vitale), a maid...

• Whenever I watch my Charlie Chaplin films on disc it is the MK2 logo that I see before I pull out the title from the DVD shelf. A staple in the French cinema their library is filled with auteurs – including last year's Cannes presented Paranoid Park (Van Sant), Zhang Ke Jia's 24 City and Belge director Dominique Abel's Rumba. This year Mk2 bring Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos's Dog tooth and Mathias Gokalp's Nothing Personal in the sidebars and they have Abdellatif Kechiche's next (Black Venus) in production (the director gave us brilliant The Secret of the Grain in 2007/08) and they also have Patrice Chereau's long awaited film – Persecution starring names like Romain Duris and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Black Venus by Abdellatif Kechiche - Production Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami - Production Diamond 13 (Diamant 13) by Gilles Beat - Completed Inferno (L'enfer D'Henri Georges Clouzot) by Serge Bromberg

...

Several AfterEllen.com readers have written in to let us know about Lucia Puenzo's new film, El Niño Pez (The Fish-Child). The Argentinian film debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, and opened in Paris this week.

The film, which is based on a novel Puenzo wrote in her early 20s, tells the story of Lala, the daughter of an affluent Argentinian judge, who falls in love with Ypoá, her family's maid. The two dream of a place they can live together, despite their differences and the taboo of lesbianism in their society. Things get even more complicated when Lala's father is murdered.

The story is non-linear, starting with the love affair, flashing forward to Lala and Ypoá's separation, and then following them as they try to find their way back to one another. Ypoá struggles to unravel the mysteries of her past (including the legend of...

Fuera De Control (Out of Control) is a dark stop motion animated short film from Mexican director Sofia Carillo. Apparently 'surreal', it doesn't seem to have a real plot. Reminiscent of Beatriz Ramos's Siniestro, its At 12 minutes long, it is screening at the Edinburgh Film Fest with Lucia Puenzo's thriller feature El Niño Pez on June 20th and 23rd 2009.

Watch the trailer and see some images...

read more...

Lucia Puenzo's thriller El Niño Pez (her follow-up to her Cannes fave Xxy) is making its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Fest on June 20th 2009.

Wealthy teenager Lala (Xxy’s Ines Efron) is in love, but it’s safe to say her parents won’t approve of her choice: the object of her affections is the family’s feisty young Paraguayan housemaid, Ailin (Mariela Vitale). Based upon Puenza’s own novel, this twisty and atmospheric tale takes the two girls from the realm of blissful romantic fantasy into an all-too-real world of crime, violence and sexual jealousy... read more...

The 24th Guadalajara Film Festival Awards went to Gerardo Tort's Viaje Redondo (Round Trip) and Peruvian Claudia Llosa's La teta asustada (The Milk of Sorrow) in the Mexican and Latin American feature film sections, respectively. Voy a explotar (I'm Going to Explode) from Canana, directed by Gerardo Naranjo won for first work in the Latin American section, even though it was actually his second work. Naranjo's first work was Drama/Mex. Carlos Enderle's Cronicas Chilanga won for Mexican first work, Mexican screenplay, and best actor award going to Patricio Castillo. Other winners included La passion de Gabriel, Corazon del Tiempo for best director, and Retorno a Hansala also for best director. The special jury prize went to Aquele Querido Mes de Agosto (This Dear Month of August). At the Coproduction Meetings awards went to Sergio Teubal for his project El dedo and to Leandro Fabrizzi of Puerto Rico for Filiberto.

During the days of the festival, The red carpet was unfurled for the world debut of The Perfect Game by William Dear and producers David Salzberg and Christian Tureaud. Encounters with the media were held for the movies Corazón del tiempo, Niño Pez, La Última y nos Vamos, and Amor sin Fin.

Otra Película de Huevos y un Pollo by brothers Rodolfo and Gabriel Riva Palacios surprised many as the film chosen to inaugurate FLCG24.

Encounters with the media were held for the feature films Voy a Explotar, Camino which won six Goya prizes, including best movie, best director and best actress, and Rabioso Sol Rabioso Cielo.

The keynote speech Sunday March 22 under the aegis of IV Digital Space in Guadalajara will be a lecture by Peter Broderick, The New World of Distribution.

Broderick, President of Paradigm Consulting, is known as one of the leading experts in the development of creative strategies for digital distribution. His innovative viewpoints have contributed to both producers and filmmakers multiplying audiences and revenue and successfully taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the digital age.

The first day's activities included Gerardo Tort presenting his movie Viaje Redondo, director and scriptwriter Alicia Scherson and star Diego Noguera presenting the Chilean movie Turistas to the press, a competitor in the Ibero-American Feature-length Fiction category.

The Gala event featured Sólo Quiero Caminar, and afterward the Guadalajara Prize was awarded to Guadalajara's own actor, director and producer Gael Garcia Bernal. Special event Cinelandia began with Manu Chao presenting the films that have touched his life, including Los Olvidados by Luis Buñuel and Princesas by fellow Spaniard Fernando Leon de Aranoa. ...