Is there a time of year when Argentine cinema becomes the true protagonist of history? Do nationally produced films have a time that can be easily recognized on the calendar? A first look at the most popular titles in our recent history on the big screen gives us a preview of what is to come this year.
The secret of their eyes (2009), Wild Tales (2014), The clan (2015) y The angel (2018), undisputed critical and public successes in all cases, arrived at local cinemas in the same month: August. Argentina, 1985 It was lucky enough to have a local release at the end of September 2022. And from the list of the highest-grossing national films of the last decade and a half, only The robbery of the century (2020) was released in January.
Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and Ursula Corberó in The Jockey
They would be left out of the list Metegol (2013) y Mom went on a trip (2017), which due to its character and spirit of proposals aimed at the whole family were scheduled in the release calendar for a date aligned with the winter holidays. In any case, this fact also works involuntarily with a general trend that was configured almost naturally from the beginning of the last decade until today.
The most ambitious Argentine cinema, the one that bets the most and also trusts in the power of its international projection, is presented to society in the second half of the year, and more precisely between August and September.
Behind this strategic choice there are some intrinsic and external factors. Firstly, the international calendar, which sets in motion the long season of awards in the northern hemisphere, is increasingly taking its toll. There are deadlines for the selection (by our Film Academy) of the films that will represent us in the quest for the Oscar and the Goya. In the case of the most important award in the industry, the one given by the Hollywood Academy, the rules this year impose a deadline of October 2 for the presentation of the chosen title.
The traditional retraction of big Hollywood releases also plays a role, putting the brakes on and applying a pause at this time of year, the hinge between the end of the most powerful releases of the northern summer and the arrival of the new releases scheduled for the last two months of the year. The Oscar requirements also play a role here: the films must be released before the end of the year to meet the Academy’s requirements for American films. This opens a window for the most important local releases.
Finally, the showcase offered by the most important festivals of this period of the year (Venice, San Sebastian, Toronto, Telluride, New York) also allows the circulation of names and titles of local production that attract the attention of the public, even more so if they achieve some important repercussion in these presentations and competitions. The best local films of recent years have successfully passed through at least one of these festivals, which have advanced the interest and expectation created later in the local sphere.
The choice of the next film to represent us in the Oscar race has a considerable influence on the design of the calendar and the determination of the release dates of the most important local titles, at least this year. The local Film Academy has already started to move towards the verdict that must inevitably be announced no later than October 2.
It was precisely the Academy that was the protagonist, last Monday, of a significant meeting between members of the local film community. Most of its members, as seen at the Sur awards ceremony, share the concern about the present and future of the local screen. In this context, this whole series of new Argentine releases scheduled to reach the theaters of our country throughout September also takes on significance.
The cast of La Práctica with director Martín Rejtman at the presentation of the film a year ago at the San Sebastian Film Festival – Credits: @ANDER GILLENEA
Everything comes together, therefore, to make September the most important month of this year for Argentine cinema. The calendar of releases begins on Saturday 7th with the premiere at the Malba of The practicethe latest film by Martín Rejtman, which arrives in Argentina almost a year after its presentation in the official competition of the San Sebastián Film Festival 2023. It is announced as a barely conventional comedy (as is usual in his case), set in the world of yoga and starring Esteban Bigliardi, who has now become the director’s fetish actor. After the release, the art film circuits of the provinces and some complexes in the city of Buenos Aires will be added.
The tour continues on Thursday 19th with a double release that has already begun to arouse curiosity and more than one expectation. In most of the large multi-screen complexes, during the series of trailers and previews prior to each function, the public discovers the first images of LindaMariana Weinstein’s debut feature film is coming to local cinemas this year with the endorsement of being the most important Argentine film programmed at one of the key festivals in the annual September calendar, the Toronto festival. It will be screened there a few days before its local premiere.
Linda It is announced as a drama with thriller touches, with a central character, a woman with a powerful and magnetic personality (played by Eugenia “China” Suárez) who begins to work as a domestic servant in the house of a well-off family. The tensions (especially in the area of sexual attraction) between the newcomer and all the members of that family will trigger unexpected consequences. Julieta Cardinali, Rafael Spregelburd and Minerva Casero complete the leading cast.
That same day the premiere in local cinemas is announced. The scent of freshly cut grasswhose most important calling card is the presence of Martin Scorsese as executive producer, present and very active at the time when it won the award for best script in one of the competitive sections of the Tribeca Film Festival.
A scene from The Scent of Freshly Cut Grass
Directed by Celina Murga, who has had Scorsese as a mentor and advisor for almost a decade, the film looks at the simultaneous stories of two university professors, both married and with children, who begin clandestine romances with students. Without knowing each other, the characters experience situations that connect in terms of feelings and reactions. Joaquín Furriel and the prominent Mexican actress Marina de Tavira (one of the protagonists of Romaby Alfonso Cuarón) are in charge of the main characters.
The other big day in September for Argentine cinema arrives on the 26th with another double premiere. One of the novelties is The jockeyan international co-production that took a long time to make and which marks the return after almost four years of Luis Ortega, one of the most original directors of local cinema. Presented a few days ago in the official competition of the Venice Film Festival, it is already the most talked about Argentine production in terms of its international projection. Its fate in that show will be known in a week.
Leonardo Sbaraglia plays José de Zer in The Man Who Loved Flying Saucers
Set in the style of Ortega (a creator very sensitive to what characters inclined to escape from any conventionalism, different from the rest) experience, The jockey The film stars a legendary jockey (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), whose self-destructive behavior works against him, especially when he is expecting a child with Abril (the Spanish Ursula Corberó), a colleague and stud partner. An unexpected accident complicates things for the couple and for the businessman (played by the Mexican Daniel Giménez Cacho) who manages their respective careers.
The other is The man who loved flying saucersthe new film by Diego Lerman, the acclaimed director of The Substitute, The Invisible Gaze, Refugee y So suddenlyIt was selected to participate in the official competition at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival and will be released in Argentine cinemas two days before the announcement of the winners of this festival, the most important of its kind for the Spanish-speaking world.
The film brings back a figure from Argentine television who at one time reached almost mythical levels, José De Zer, a journalist and host who in 1986 receives a call and a very strange proposal that leads him to undertake a trip to Córdoba accompanied by a cameraman. Upon arriving there, what he discovers activates De Zer’s imagination, who begins to imagine and put into practice a plan that will change his life forever.
Leonardo Sbaraglia personifies the remembered figure from programs such as Nuevediario and is accompanied by Sergio Prina (as Chango, his popular cameraman), Osmar Núñez, María Merlino, Renata Lerman, Mónica Ayos, Norman Briski and Daniel Aráoz. After its run in theaters, the film will be added to the Netflix catalog on October 18, a platform that added this novelty to the list of national production titles announced under the generic name of Made in Argentina.
It won’t be the only Argentine film coming to theaters during September, but it will be the highlight. To this list we must add a handful of other new releases that open on Thursday 5th with the arrival in theaters of the Spanish-Argentine co-production A giraffe on the balconystarring Andrea Frigerio as an Argentine woman living in Spain, exiled and currently retired, who returns to her native country, from which she escaped in 1978 (when she was a member of a left-wing group and was about to be kidnapped), to testify in a trial for the disappearance of the father of her only daughter.
At that moment she discovers that both of them were handed over by an old friend who collaborated with the repression and the wounds of the past reappear in the worst way. The film was directed by the Argentine Diego Yaker and stars Frigerio Fini Bocchino (daughter of the actress in real life), Juan Leyrado, Claudio Gallardou, Mimí Ardú and Mirta Busnelli.
It is also co-produced between Argentina and Spain. The blue starby Aragonese director Javier Macipe, the chronicle (in fiction, but with some documentary notes) of the meeting between a Spanish rocker (Pepe Llorente) on a trip through our country and the “father of chacarera”, played by Cuti Carabajal. It premieres on September 12.
And the 19th will finally arrive What remainsan intimate drama spoken in Spanish and English that is presented as the debut film by director Mariela Escobar and narrates the real and symbolic journey of a woman who returns from Canada to Argentina in search of clues and memories of her life together with a man who has just suffered an accident.
