Thursday, April 19, 1 pm
Friday, April 20, 4 pm
Thursday, April 19, 1 pm
LA NIÑA SANTA
In the town of La Ciénaga, teenage Amalia lives with her attractive, divorced mother, Helena (Mercedes Morán), and her uncle, Freddy (Alejandro Urdapilleta), in the crumbling, run-down Hotel Termas, which her family owns and runs. The lives of the Amalia, her friend Josefina and their families intersect with those of a group of visiting ear, nose and throat specialists staying at the hotel for a medical convention, including the married, middle-aged Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso). Understanding the temptation of good and the evil it causes La niña santa delicately explores themes of sin, frustration and desire.
Friday, April 20, 4 pm
ZAMA
After a nine-year hiatus, filmmaker Lucrecia Martel has returned triumphant with an elliptical adaptation of Antonio Di Benedetto’s existential novel about a Spanish corregidor locked in nightmarish, bureaucratic stasis, waiting for news on his impending transfer. Thrown headfirst onto shore with our adrift, eponymous protagonist, the shroud over his future becomes increasingly opaque as more questions are posed than answered. An unsettling air of malaria and malaise permeate Zama’s lodgings and his bearings in this challenging, brilliant, intangibly Kafkaesque period piece, co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar and Gael García Bernal.
About the filmmaker:
LUCRECIA MARTEL (born 1966) is an Argentine film director, screenwriter and producer often associated with the New Argentine Cinema movement alongside directors Pablo Trapero, Martín Rejtman and Lisandro Alonso. She was born in Salta in northern Argentina and settled in Buenos Aires. In 1988, she enrolled at the Escuela Nacional de Experimentación y Realización Cinematográfica (ENERC), but her education was cut short due to lack of funds. Largely self-taught, Martel began her career directing short films between 1988 and 1995, one of which, Rey muerto (Dead King, 1995), won a series of awards on the international film festival circuit. Martel is best known for her three features, La ciénaga (The Swamp, 2001), La niña santa (The Holy Girl, 2004, Cannes Palm d’Or nominee in 2004) and La mujer sin cabeza (The Headless Woman, 2008, Cannes Palm d’Or nominee in 2008), all of which were filmed in the region around Salta. This trilogy of films exemplify Martel’s unique cinematic voice and her remarkable approach to narrative storytelling, sense of place, subjective encounters and the universality of human experience. In 2006, Martel was a member of the Cannes Film Festival Feature Films Jury. She has won awards for her films at many major festivals, including the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival and the 2008 Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival. Martel’s latest feature, Zama, is based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Antonio di Benedetto. Zama premiered at the 2017 Venice International Film Festival and then screened at Toronto International Film Festival. The Argentine Academy of Cinematography Arts and Sciences chose the film as the national entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards and Best Iberoamerican Film at the 32nd Goya Awards.