The Buenos Aires International Film Festival had another smashing year, with some 380,000 viewers coming to see one or more of the 504 films included in this year’s program. Besides the usual screenings, this year’s festival included eight live concerts (including a surprise performance by the Argentine rock band Babasónicos) and 12 outdoor screenings at the Parque Centenario amphitheatre. The park also hosted the closing night activity, with a screening of the Argentine film ‘Living Stars’ (Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat), where viewers not only watched but also got up and danced. Worth mentioning that Cohn and Duprat’s film merited a special mention in the Avant-Garde and Genre section.
Awaiting the start of one of Parque Centenario’s outdoor screenings (Photo courtesy of Bafici)
It was another grand year for Argentine films, with some critics convinced that the grand prize for the International Competition should have gone to the Argentine film ‘Mauro’ (Hernán Rosselli), which did receive the special jury’s award. The best film award in the Argentine competition went to ‘El escarabajo de oro’ (Alejo Moguillansky), an ambitious and zany movie that combines a coproduction in the making with a search for a hidden treasure in the depths of Misiones. Best director went to Gustavo Fontán for ‘El Rostro’ and special mention to ‘Carta a un padre’, by Edgardo Cozarinsky. One wonderful film I caught in the Argentine selection was ‘La Salada’, opera prima of Juan Martín Hzu, that shares the stories and often unheard voices of some of the country’s most recent immigrants (the Koreans, Bolivians and Taiwanese, which include the director’s own parents). If you didn’t get a chance to catch these films at the festival, you’re in luck, as most of them will undoubtedly reach local theatres at some point this year.
Uri Zohar (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
The BAFICI is known for its broad and often surprising selection of directors for its Retrospective section, and this year’s list included an Israeli director (later turned rabbi) by the name of Uri Zohar. The Zohar retrospective covered everything from Fellini-esque desert deliriums like ‘A Hole in the Moon’ to a once comedy (now tragedy) about Israeli’s machista culture (‘Peeping Toms’) – not to mention the scathing critiques of Zionism in films like ‘Every Bastard a King’. BAFICI audiences thus got a unique chance to see the world through the eyes of Israel’s most renowned baal teshuvah (a secular Jew who returns to religious Judaism). Props go to the retrospective’s curator, Ariel Schweitzer, who spoke at almost every Zohar screening with unusual fervour in addition to giving a talk at CC Recoleta, “Who are you, Uri Zohar?”
Returning to the International Competition, the festival’s most coveted award went to the Iranian film ‘Fifi Howls from Happiness’. In this precious little gem of a documentary, the Iranian artist Mitra Farahani meets with the self-exiled artist Bahmann Mohasses, who destroyed nearly all of his works in 1979 and was believed dead until Farahani caught up with him in 2010. A touching portrait of a man whose time, he is convinced, is long past, and a bewildering reflection on life and art. Other awards in the International Competition included special mentions for ‘El futuro’ by Luis López Carrasco (Spain) and ‘Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy’ by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (Thailand); best actor for Fernando Bacilio in the tragicomic Peruvian film ‘El mudo’ (directed by Daniel Vega and Diego Vega – who also won the best director’s award); and best actress for Sophie Desmarais por ‘Sarah préfère la course’, by Chloé Robichaud (Canada). (See below for the list of other awards)
Perhaps the only drawback to this edition of BAFICI was, as happens every year, that the films everyone wants to see sell out—sometimes even before the festival has started. This was the case of ‘20,000 Days on Earth’ (Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard), ‘Our Sunhi’ (Hong Sangsoo), ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ (Jim Jarmusch), ‘Why Don’t You Play in Hell?’ (Sion Sono), and many others—including several of the Argentine films in the festival. It would perhaps be in BAFICI’s best interest to sacrifice a handful of the films included on the list to make room for more screenings of coveted films like these during the 12 days of the festival. In any case, even for those who showed up at the last minute, there was always something unusual to see, a treat in a city whose venues for alternative films have been greatly diminished over the past few decades. BAFICI audiences are certainly testament to the city’s continuing passion for all types of cinemas.
Short Film Competition
Speical Mentions: ‘Rockero Reyes’ by Romina Cohn and ‘No sé María’ by Paula Grinzpan
Second Prize: ‘La Reina’ by Manuel Abramovich
First Prize: ‘Lo que dicen del monte’ by Octavio Tavares and Francisca Oyaneder
Human Rights Competition
Mention: ‘ReMine, el último movimiento obrero’ by Marcos Martínez Merino (Spain)
Best Film: ‘El cuarto desnudo’, by Nuria Ibañez (Mexico)
Avant-Garde and Genre Competition
Special Mention for Short film: ‘Alan Vega, Just a Million Dreams’ by Marie Losier
Best Short: ‘Redemption’ by Miguel Gomes
Special Mention for a Feature-Length Film: ‘Living Stars’ by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat
Best Film: ‘It for Others’ by Duncan Campbel
Jury’s Grand Prize: ‘Manakamana’ by Stephanie Spray and Pacho Véle
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