Fendrik, Puenzo team on 'Smoke Men' (Variety)

Project is set up at Historias Cinematograficas

By JOHN HOPEWELL, ELSA KESLASSY

PARIS -- Two of Latin America's most striking directorial talents, Argentina's Pablo Fendrik and Lucia Puenzo, have teamed to write suspenser "Hombres de humo" (Smoke Men).

Fendrik is attached to direct.

One of the standout projects at Paris Project, a three-day film financing forum that wraps Wednesday in the French capital, "Men" is set up at Historias Cinematograficas, the Buenos Aires production shingle of Academy Award nominated director-producer Luis Puenzo ("The Official Story").

Fendrik, who broke through to recognition with "The Mugger" and "Blood Appears," both Cannes Critics' Week players, aims to shoot "Smoke Men" late 2011, after rolling February 2011 on "Ardor."

Lucia Puenzo, who turned heads as a director with debut "XXY," which won the Cannes Critics' Week Grand Prix, is taking on production labors.

Historias Cinematograficas aims to structure "Men" as an Argentine-European co-production, Fendrik said in Paris.

That looks in the cards. Historias Cinematograficas holds down a first-look co-production deal with Jose Maria Morales' Wanda Films in Spain.

Puenzo's two features -- "XXY" and "The Fish Child" -- were co-produced out of France by Pyramide and MK2 respectively. Fendrik's second film "Blood" drew down Gallic co-production coin from Acrobates.

Set in a city outside Buenos Aires, "Men" begins Hitchcock style with a man who's involved in Argentina's worst-ever multiple pileup, and seizes the opportunity to murder the woman in the passenger seat.

Film then shuttles between the past and the future as a femme doctor begins to have suspicions about the woman's death.

According to Fendrik, "Men" "is very close to my favorite intentions: to deliver a highly emotional action film whose main characters try to control their basic instincts, but don't always succeed."

Pic lead character is a foreigner, a former war photographer, visiting Argentina, said Fendrik.

"Men" will be more mainstream than his past pics, he added.

The screenplay will be completed in August.

Regent, Here reel in 'El Niño Pez' (The Hollywood Reporter)

CANNES -- Regent Releasing has acquired North American rights from MK2 to the Argentinean drama "El Nino Pez" (The Fish Child), the second film from director Lucia Puenzo, and "Zion and His Brother," from debut filmmaker Eran Merav. An early 2010 release in select cities are planned for both films.

Regent will distribute both films in select cities in early 2010.

"El Nino," which played both the Berlin and Tribeca fests, was produced by Luis Puenzo and Jose Maria Morales and co-produced by MK2's Marin Karmitz, Nathanael Karmitz and Charles Gillibert. Adapted from Puenzo's 2004 novel, it focuses on the teenage Lala (Ines Efron), who is in love with Guayi (Mariela Vitale), her family's 20-year-old Paraguayan maid.

"Zion," which played Sundance, was produced by Assaf Amir and Yoav Roek with co-producers Marin Karmitz, Nathanael Karmitz and Charles Gillibert. It stars Tzahi Grad and Reuven Badalov as two brothers in a gritty neighborhood in Haifa.

Regent's upcoming domestic releases include the Japanese film "Departures," this year's Oscar winner as best foreign-language feature.

Berlinale: "El niño pez", de Lucía Puenzo (Screen Daily)

David D'Arcy in Berlin

07 Feb 2009 18:46

Dir: Lucia Puenzo. Argentina. 2009. 96mins

The Fish Child is an upstairs-downstairs cross-border lesbian love-on-the-run thriller – but it's main virtue is that it doesn't let any of these interwoven genres get in the way of intense erotic drama. Lucia Puenzo's second film (after XXY) is sure to travel internationally to festivals, and should play well in Latin America and Spain. Success in the US could depend on combining an art house release with penetrating the Spanish-language market, and its future in home video looks good. While the two lead actresses, Ines Efron and Mariela Vitale, are stars to watch, they're not quite yet an easy sell in the US.

The feminist plot of two aggrieved lovers united in a revenge killing is another hook on which to hang the picture commercially. The story is also ripe for an American remake with major stars.

Puenzo adapted The Fish Child from her 2004 novel of the same name, in which upper-class Buenos Aires girl Lala (Efron) falls in love with dark-eyed Guayi (Vitale), a younger Paraguayan maid in Lala's family home. Guayi introduces Lala to a snarl of abusive relationships – with a trainer of fighting dogs, with Guayi's violent father, and with Lala's own father, a judge, whose murder sends Guayi to prison and adds new tangles of complexity to the love story. Think of a Latin Thelma and Louise, minus the humour.

Although her origins are in prose and screenwriting, Puenzo shows her gifts once again as a director of actors. The film is shot and edited delicately, making every inflection count.

In dark close-ups that favour subtlety over grand gestures, DP Rodrigo Pulpeiro gives the story of abuse and exploitation a grim believability. There's poignant poetry in his underwater shots in a Paraguayan lake which follow a creature that gives the film its name. He also has separate palettes for a corrupt Argentina and Guayi's purely natural Paraguay, which advance the drama and give The Fish Child its distinctive look.

Yet the real strength of The Fish Child lies in the acting: Efron as the cerebral calculating rich girl with a killer instinct, and Vitale as the vulnerable and victimised immigrant servant. The balance of that dichotomy shifts as the multiple stories twist, just as the languid sensuality between the two leads bursts into violence.

Underlying the story of illicit love is an immigrant drama about Paraguayans who leave their poor country to work in wealthier Argentina, where they are exploited. This topical border story, little-known outside the two countries in question, is as common as the tale of fugitive lovers, but Puenzo's telling of it takes it beyond the easy clichés. There is a promising future for her, as there is for her actresses.

Production companies
Wanda Vision
MK2
Historias Cinematograficas

El niño pez/The Fish Child, de Lucía Puenzo (Variety)

El Nino Pez
(Argentina - Spain - France) A Distribution Co. release (in Argentina) of a Historias Cinematograficas presentation and production, in co-production with Wanda Vision, MK2. (International sales: MK2, Paris.) Produced by Luis Puenzo, Jose Maria Morales. Executive producers, Fernando Sirianni, Miguel Morales, Claire Dornoy. Directed, written by Lucia Puenzo, based on her novel.

With: Ines Efron, Mariela Vitale, Pep Munne, Arnaldo Andre, Carlos Bardem, Diego Velazquez, Julian Doregger, Jeronimo Perassolo.

By BOYD VAN HOEIJ

A churning maelstrom of events that includes theft, murder and imprisonment threatens to swamp two girls in love in "The Fish Child," from Argentine helmer Lucia Puenzo. Sophomore effort, based on helmer's own novel, might at first seem radically different from her languid but powerful debut "XXY," though it does reteam Puenzo with its gamine protag Ines Efron. "Child's" fractured, fast-paced narrative always holds the audience's interest, even if at times it feels like there are enough twits onscreen to last a telenovela scribe for years. Pic should be a natural for LGBT fests and beyond.

Though focusing on two gals rather than two guys, the movie has a lot in common with Marcelo Pineyro's queer cult hit "Burnt Money." In both films, a couple against all odds turns to crime to realize their dream of being together, and though their stories start in Buenos Aires, Argentina, they soon detour to neighboring countries. A tendency to prefer visual panache to narrative fluidity is clear in both, as is a simmering erotic tension that constitutes a large part of their appeal.

Teenager Lala (Efron), the daughter of a Buenos Aires judge (Pep Munne), is in love with Ailin (Mariela Vitale), the 20-year-old Paraguayan maid of the household. They steal anything they can lay their hands on to save for their planned escape to Lake Ypoa in Paraguay, where Ailin grew up. But because of events involving Lala's dad that only gradually become clear, Ailin ends up in prison while Lala finds herself at Lake Ypoa alone, where she investigates her lover's dark past.

On the surface, pic is miles away from "XXY," but still Puenzo -- who's had to change many things from her novel, starting with the fact it was narrated by the girls' dog -- seems more concerned with atmosphere and rhythm than precise plot points. Grainy 16mm lensing feels just right, and editing by Hugo Primeiro is primarily concerned with balancing action and suspense with overall clarity.

The skinny, light-haired Efron ("Glue," "The Headless Woman") has a knack for finding offbeat projects, even though she hasn't shown much range and here again plays an awkward, wayward girl who seems to swallow her words.

Voluptuous, dark-haired newcomer Mariel Vitale was clearly cast as a contrast to Efron, but easily holds her own. Puenzo's unobtrusive insistence on what separates the girls, from their class status to their physical appearance, makes their being together feel more deserved, even though a prolonged shouting match in prison in which they thrash out all their issues is not as involving as it should be.

Pic's title is a reference to a fish child said to reside in Lake Ypoa. It gives Puenzo an excuse to indulge in a wonderfully conceived scene with magical-realist touches in which Lala dives into the lake for an encounter with the title character.

Camera (color, 16mm-to-35mm), Rodrigo Pulpeiro; editor, Hugo Primeiro; music, Andres Goldstein, Daniel Tarrab, Laura Zisman; art director, Mercedes Alfonsin; costume designer, Julio Suarez; sound (Dolby Digital), Fernando Soldevila; associate producers, Marin Karmitz, Nathanael Karmitz, Charles Gillibert; assistant director, Fabiana Tiscornia. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Panorama Special), Feb. 6, 2009. Running time: 95 MIN.

Entrevista a Lucía Puenzo (Clarín)

Link

Panorama 2009 and Further Renowned Directors: Catherine Breillat, Michael Winterbottom, Michael Glawogger, Lucía Puenzo, and Philippe Lioret

Lucía Puenzo

Shortly before completing our selection for this year’s programme, it has become evident that genuinely independent cinema – in contrast to the independents of the major studios in the early 2000s – is at an advantage due to the economic crisis. In other words: cinema now promises to become more radical and audacious again, and hence more inspiring. This development can be seen not only in a new generation of filmmakers like Lucía Puenzo, who will be presenting her second film, El niño pez, in which the love of two women takes them to the brink of something that goes far beyond personal sensitivities and ends in a political thriller. But it can be seen also in a luminary of independent filmmaking like Catherine Breillat (Manfred Salzgeber Award in 2001 for À ma soeur!), who illustrates with her latest work "La Barbe Bleue", an exploration of the famous tale of Bluebeard, that things are moving in this direction.

Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross (Silver Bear in 2006 for The Road to Guantanamo ) will present in Panorama Dokumente a work in progress: The Shock Doctrine. Based on Naomi Klein’s book of the same name, the filmmakers analyse in it the systematic trend towards the privatization of public assets – a trend that has, in the interim, affected national economies almost everywhere, and by doing so is generating a sense of injustice in billions of people.

Philippe Lioret’s Welcome shows the tragic situation in which illegal refugees from Iraq find themselves, if they try to reach England from France.

In the German-Austrian-French production Das Vaterspiel, Michael Glawogger portrays how the persecution of the Jews under the Nazi regime can still unexpectedly affect the present.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of this section, first presented as the “Info-Schau” in 1980 by its former director Manfred Salzgeber (and renamed Panorama in 1986), a number of filmmakers from the early years will show their latest films: in 1985, for instance, the “Info-Schau” screened Gus Van Sant’s directorial debut, Mala Noche, as well as the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk by Robert Epstein, who won an Oscar for it. Now, in 2009, Gus Van Sant will present Milk, his new film about Harvey Milk, the first gay city commissioner in San Francisco in the late 1970s, who died by assassination; Robert Epstein’s documentary on the same topic will be re-screened on this occasion.

In addition to her most recent film in the Main Programme, Catherine Breillat’s film Tapage nocturne, which was first presented in 1980, will be shown again in 2009. Joe Dallesandro, who played one of the protagonists in her film, is this year’s Special TEDDY Award-winner. He will also be coming to Berlin for the presentation of Little Joe, Nicole Haeusser’s documentary portrait of him.

A John Hurt triptych completes the films being presented for this 30th anniversary: in the official programme, Panorama will be showing British director Richard Laxton’s latest film, An Englishman In New York , in which John Hurt plays Quentin Crisp in his later years in New York , as was celebrated in Sting’s 1987 hit of the same name. The Presentation also includes Jonathan Nossiter’s first film, Resident Alien (with Quentin Crisp, John Hurt, Holly Woodlawn and Sting) that premiered in Panorama in 1990, as well as Jack Gold’s legendary The Naked Civil Servant (1975), in which John Hurt plays the young Quentin Crisp in England .

From some 70,000 archive images, graphic artist Jörg Eschenburg has selected 172 photos of directors, actors and actresses, and assembled them into a historical collage for a special “30 years of programming” poster.

Soon we will announce the opening films of the Main Programme, Panorama Special and Panorama Dokumente, as well as the complete list of films.

Features

La Barbe bleue by Catherine Breillat, France (world premiere)

With Dominique Thomas, Lola Creton, Daphné Baiwir

An Englishman In New York by Richard Laxton, Great Britain/USA (world premiere)

With John Hurt, Denis O'Hare, Jonathan Tucker, Swoozie Kurtz, Cynthia Nixon

Das Vaterspiel (Kill Daddy Good Night) by Michael Glawogger, Germany/Austria/France (world premiere)

With Jeremy Strong, Ulrich Tukur, Sabine Timoteo

El niño pez (The Fish Child) by Lucía Puenzo , Argentina / Spain (world premiere)

With Inés Efrón, Emme, Pep Munné, Arnaldo André, Carlos Bardem

Welcome by Philippe Lioret , France

With Vincent Lindon, Firat Ayverdi, Audrey Dana

Panorama Dokumente

The Shock Doctrine by Michael Winterbottom, Mat Whitecross , Great Britain (world premiere)

Little Joe by Nicole Haeusser, USA (world premiere)

With Joe Dallesandro

30 Years of Programming - Celebration Presentations

Milk by Gus Van Sant, USA 2008

With Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Diego Luna, Josh Brolin, James Franco

Resident Alien by Jonathan Nossiter, USA 1990

With Quentin Crisp, John Hurt, Holly Woodlawn, Sting

Tapage nocturne by Catherine Breillat, France 1979

With Bertrand Bonvoisin, Marie-Hélène Breillat, Joe Dallesandro, Dominique Laffin, Gérard Lanvin

The Naked Civil Servant by Jack Gold, Great Britain 1975

With John Hurt, Liz Gebhardt, Stanley Lebor, Katharine Schofield

The Times Of Harvey Milk by Robert Epstein, USA 1984

Oscar for Best Documentary Film in 1985