Parabéns Brasil!
I’m Still Here Wins Oscar For Brazil, Argentine Films To See This Month
Brazil Celebrates Oscar Victory
The sun is shinning in London today and we’re basking in some spring optimism following the news of Brazil’s historic Oscar win on Sunday.
Congratulations to Walter Salles, whose film I’m Still Here (Aindo estou aqui) took the Academy Award for Best International Film, the first Brazilian film to win the award!
In Brazil, celebrations were still in full swing on Monday, particularly in Rio where Carnival began on Saturday, and where Rio Mayor, Eduardo Paes, has announced his administration will buy the house where the film was shot to turn it into a cinema museum. Brazilian outlets also revealed that leading actress Fernanda Torres, who plays Eunice Paiva in the film, has been invited to the ‘Champions Parade’ at Rio’s Carnival on Saturday, along with the top six performers of the samba league.
In his acceptance speech at the Oscars ceremony Salles dedicated the award to the strength and resilience of Eunice Paiva, and to actresses Fernanda Torres and Fermanda Montenegro “the two women who gave life to her.”
In the UK, I’m Still Here has broken box-office records as the biggest Latin American opening of all time (surpassing Salles’ 2004 hit The Motorcycle Diaries) since its release on February 21st, and is the most successful Brazilian release in the US since City of God, over 20 years ago.
Best-Selling Argentine Author Claudia Piñeiro Presents Elena Knows In London
I’m Still Here (Ainda estou aqui) is based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the youngest of Rubens and Eunice Paiva children. It will be available in English later this year thanks to Charco Press, a British publisher specialising in award-winning literature from contemporary Latin American authors.
Coinciding with International Women’s Day this weekend, Charco Press will be hosting a special book club event on Monday 10th March celebrating the English translation of Elena Knows (Elena Sabe) the third novel by best-selling Argentine author Claudia Piñeiro. The internationally renowned Piñeiro has bee been described as the “Hitchcock of the River Plate”; she is the third most translated Argentine author after Borges and Cortázar, placing her as the most translated woman writer in Argentina.
In Elena Knows, a woman goes searching for answers after her daughter’s body is found hanging in a church bell tower. Not satisfied by the police’s ruling of suicide, and convinced that she was murdered, Elena embarks on a journey across the suburbs of Buenos Aires as she tries to uncover the truth about her daughter’s death, all the while doing so while grappling with the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease. The Booker-Prize nominated novel explores illness and caring, mother-daughter relationships, and a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body. In 2023 Elena Knows was made into a film directed by Anahi Berneri and starring Mercedes Morán and Erica Rivas.
BookBlast® Translation Book Club will be hosting a special event with the author on Monday 10th March at Hatchards Piccadilly, London, where Claudia Piñeiro will discuss Elena Knows. She will be joined by Carolina Orloff, co-founder of Charco Press. Tickets here.
Elena Knows is currently available to stream on Netflix
Gaucho Gaucho: Argentina’s Last Ranchers
If the Argentine tango is about passion, and the feminine seductiveness of Argentine culture, then the gaucho, or cowboy, has been seen as a symbol of Argentina’s masculinity, representing freedom and wide-open spaces.
Gaucho, Gaucho, the visually breathtaking documentary from Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, delves into the myth surrounding the Argentine gaucho through an in-depth look at the community of gauchos salteños living in the rugged landscape and desert plains of Argentina’s northwest, where the country borders Bolivia and Chile.
Shot in stunning black-and-white over the course of two years Gaucho, Gaucho is a portrait of a people shaped by their traditions and connections to the natural world; where horses, cows and condors receive equal weight with those that share their environment.
The directors - whose two previous films The Last Race and The Truffle Hunters, also dealt with remote communities - stumbled across this gaucho enclave by chance (Kershaw’s wife is Argentine) and worked hard to gain their trust before filming.
“The difficult part is to try to find communities that aren’t constantly consuming media,” Dwerk told Indiewire in a recent interview. “That’s where everything changes; your traditions become secondary, and your identities disappear quickly.” He continued: “We wanted the image to reflect a feeling of this place removed from globalization and technology”
In this sense Gaucho Gaucho recalls recent Latin American films such as Tatiana Huezo’s documentary El eco, which followed a group of families in a Mexican village, or even Ciro Guerra’s Amazonian feature Embrace of the Serpent. Guada, a teenage girl who rejects the conventions of school and possible motherhood to follow her dream of joining the male-dominated gaucho community is one of the film’s most intriguing characters. But instead of exploring any friction in her story, the film coyly sidesteps it. There is also no hint as to how the guachos fit into the wider Argentine society, which is a noticeable omission given Salta’s population is amongst the poorest in the country
Gaucho Gaucho focus is on image, and the film seems content to confirm to the romantic stereotypes. Setting this aside, there is no doubt it is a sensory feast and a tribute to a quintessentially, and perhaps endangered, Argentine way of life.
Gaucho, Gaucho can be seen on the BBC iPlayer
Argentine Classic Nine Queens Remastered In 4k
Fabien Bielinsky was an assistant to Argentine film director Carlos Sorin, when his script was picked out from 350 entries in a screenwriting competition to win him the funding for his first feature. The resulting Nine Queens (Nueve reinas, 2000) launched his filmmaking career, as well as that of his leading man, Ricardo Darin, then a soap star. The intricate crime caper was a huge box-office sensation on its release in Argentina, and was seen in cinemas around the world. The film has now been remastered in 4k and was re-released in Argentina last year. It also screened at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and is now available to stream in its new edition on various platforms.
Set in present-day Buenos Aires and taking place over the course of 24 hours, a criminal meet cute sees rookie crook Juan (Gaston Pauls) rescued from arrest by experienced con artist Marcos (Ricardo Darin) posing as a police officer. From that chance encounter a burgeoning partnership appears to be cemented when an opportunity to acquire and sell on a forged sheet of rare stamps (the Nine Queens) presents itself, and is made more appealing by the fact the client is about to be deported to Venezuela and is unlikely to check their authenticity. All is not so straightforward however, and as suspicions mount, so do the delicious plot twists.
Sadly Fabien Bielinsky would only make only one more film, The Aura (El aura, 2005), before his untimely death of a heart attack in 2006. George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh picked up the rights for a Nine Queens American remake, the entirely forgettable Criminal (2004) (which in Argentina went straight to DVD) and there was also the Indian Bluffmaster (2005) starring Priyanka Chopkra. In 2020 Miami-based Miami-based BTF Media announced it would be making the film into a TV series with details yet to be confirmed. The original Nine Queens is still considered to be one of the best thrillers in the history of Argentine cinema.
Now on Curzon Home Cinema
More Film Events This March
Screen Cuba, 16-29 March, London
The second edition of the Cuban Film Festival returns to London and includes a screening of the Cuban classic Guantanamera (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Juan Carlos Tabío, 1995) at the ICA on March 18th.
That’s all for now,
¡Saludos!
The Argentine Film Festival Team