2024-09-03 03:01:00
It is a province, but due to its multiple realities it seems like a country: among others, the population density of the suburbs and its contrasts coexist, the hundreds of towns with a checkerboard urban design and sacred siesta, the holiday air of the cities bathed by the Atlantic Ocean, the lethargic temporal perception of the Delta area and the unseasonable winds of the region that operates as a gateway to Patagonia. This variety of circumstances and contexts will be reflected in the International Film Festival of the Province of Buenos Aires (FICPBA)whose second edition will be held between September 4th and 14th in sixty theatres distributed in La Plata (the Provincial Arts Centre Teatro Argentino, Cinema Paradiso and Select) and more than 40 municipalities. All the functions and parallel activities –the schedule can be downloaded from the website– will take place free admission.
As in 99 out of 100 festivals, the highlight will be the programme. The offer is happily endless: 228 movies (45 of them will be released as international, Latin American or national premieres) from 43 countries distributed in five competitive sections (international fiction and documentary feature films, international short films, feature films and short films from Buenos Aires) and others without prize distribution. The breakdown of the figures results in: 115 feature films, 101 short films, eight medium-length films and four seriesThe program also includes talks, interviews, live music, a student meeting and the debut of the Buenos Aires International Audiovisual Industry Market.
The numbers are higher than those of the first edition, held exactly one year ago: eight days, almost two hundred productions and 35 municipalities involved compared to ten days, 228 films and 40 municipalities in 2024. Not bad for a context with very little good news for the audiovisual sector. “This year is much bigger than last year,” acknowledges the director of FICPBA, Paula de Luqueand adds: “We are doing an intense job from the provincial government, in the sense that we have a double task, which is to contain and propose. It is a political decision to work with fewer resources to do more so that cultural spaces do not cease to exist. Everything that cannot be achieved with money, is achieved with management. We are upholding our ideals and values that there must be a space for culture.”
“Us We put together the festival with the values of diversity. Diversity unites us, and I like to say that FICPBA is a festival about identities. Identity cannot be measured, but rather it arises from dialogue with others. That is where the Buenos Aires identity is affirmed in dialogue with national, regional and international identities. The values that we propose are inclusion, work, the importance of sovereignty, community, encounter, the right to culture, the circulation of cultural goods and the relationship with the outside world in relation to the international market,” adds De Luque. The director highlights a section of deaf cinema and another called Cine al Barrio, “in which very vulnerable populations that have never been to the cinema and who this year learned, through the festival, to film their short films with cell phones,” and now they will be screened in a special screening.
The diagonals of cinema
The programming structure will have its main column in its five skillsthe same as last year: two dedicated to international feature films (Fiction and Documentary), another for Buenos Aires productions (Short and Feature Films) and one for International Short Films. There will also be a good amount of parallel sectionsamong which are Contemporary Brazil, Festival of Festivals, Special Functions, Ficpbita (aimed at family productions), Women and Dissidences, an international panorama and an Argentine one. And Argentine, precisely, is the nationality of the opening movie, More people die on Sundaysby Yair Saidabout a young middle-class Jewish man who returns from Europe following the death of his uncle and learns that his mother has decided to disconnect the respirator that has been keeping his father alive for years.
The second feature film from the person responsible for Flora is not a song to life had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and will be part of the Horizontes Latinos section of the San Sebastian Film Festival, days after being part of the triple of local representatives in the International Competition. The other two are No Exitof Marcelo Politanowhich follows a young college student kidnapped for trafficking purposes, and I had the heartof Oliver Kolker and Hernán Findlingabout a down-on-his-luck rock producer who discovers a great tango singer in a mechanic he meets by accident.
A good tour of the world’s screens, whose first stop was Berlin, also had City; countrysidewhich the director Juliana Rojas proposes two stories of migration between the city and the countryside. While Joana leaves her rural home to go to the overwhelming São Paulo, a couple settles in the countryside to fight against frustrations and the past. The Portuguese also passed through Berlin Hands in the fireof Daisy Giland the Chinese Xiao ban jieof Yaonan LiuThe first one focuses on a young film student who is working on a documentary about the old Portuguese manor houses and decides to film one of them, not knowing that it is a real house of horrors.
The Asian production keeps strangeness at its narrative center, through the particular refuge found by a 14-year-old boy living in a ruined district. Another film with several stamps in its passport is Hunting Dazefrom the Canadian Annick Blancabout an exotic dancer who, after being stranded in the north of the country, manages to convince a group of hunters to join them. K premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festivalhow are you color?in which the Indian director Shahrukh Khan Chavada observes the life of Razzak and his family through a series of everyday events.
The Documentary Feature Film Competition will serve as the stage for the first public screenings of Once upon a time there was a wizardof Oscar Frenkel and Salome Jurythe daughter of a certain Leonardo Favio (Jury, it is worth remembering, was her real surname). According to the synopsis, it is “a sensitive and in-depth interview between director and daughter where they talk about religion, cinema and politics, as well as providing behind-the-scenes material from the filming of Aniceto”. Will also compete Noritawhere Jayson Nc Namara and Andrea Tortonese They narrate the life of the unforgettable Mother of Plaza de Mayo Nora Cortiñas through testimonies from people who knew her, including Gustavo Santaolalla (also in charge of the music), actress Jane Fonda, director Muschietti, and her sister and producer Barbara.
Market debut
Outside the screens, the big news of FICPBA will happen between the desks, chairs and coffees of the First International Market of the Audiovisual Industrywhich will be developed between 5 and 9 in La Plata with the aim of “facilitating meetings for the realization of international co-production agreements, promoting the development, distribution, exchange and cultural integration between the province and the world.” “We had a thriving industry that exported content and brought in foreign currency. Today, that entire market is a bit exposed: Ventana Sur is not being made in Argentina, INCAA is absent, Mar del Plata does not exist… Our idea is to try to contain that with a market that allows interaction with the world. That interaction is not an abstraction, but rather results in sales of our products and the possibility of co-producing,” says De Luque.
Participation in the market is free and registration is open to all members of the audiovisual industry, from producers, distributors and sales agents to programmers and exhibitors. Over the course of five days there will be self-organized meetings and gatherings, as well as round tables and specialized conferences for the sector. Among the guests are the American documentary maker, the programmer of the Sundance Film Festival, and the director of the event. Ana Souzathe Brazilian producer Vania Catani and her Argentine colleague Paula Zyngierman.
Kick the province
It is not easy to cover a territory similar to that of Italy, but FICPBA took on that challenge last year, reaching 35 municipalities. This year there will be more than 40, several of which do not have commercial theaters, much less other theaters for alternative screenings. “The circulation of cultural goods is a right, and in that sense it is very important that this type of cinema reaches where commercial cinema does not. Festivals are important precisely for that, because beyond the rules of the market, the people must have the right to consume excellent cultural goods. Festivals exist so that an entire community, an entire town, can see films that they would not otherwise see. These films that do not reach are increasingly more frequent because the entire exhibition is in crisis,” says De Luque.