30/09/2024 - The Argentinian director discusses his next project, which was presented with the DALE! (Latin America-Europe Development) Award in the Europe-Latin American Co-production Forum

After winning both the DALE! (Latin America-Europe Development) Award and the Award for Best Project in the Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum at the 72nd San Sebastián Film Festival (see the news), Argentinian director Francisco Lezama, who also scooped the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at this year’s Berlinale for An Odd Turn, answered our questions about his debut feature-length project, The Two Landscapes, which follows an upper-middle-class woman who officiates in the Catholic church in a town where conversions to evangelism are changing deep-rooted traditions and rituals.

Cineuropa: What are the origins of this project, and which topics are you intending to deal with in it?
Francisco Lezama: A while ago, I started developing a series of comedy shorts that, among other things, were an attempt to leave behind a record of the obsessive and erotic relationship that the average Argentinian had (and still has) with saving money in times of inflation and crisis. The Two Landscapes is a continuation of these ideas about the eroticism of transactions, but instead of looking at the circulation of money, it focuses on the circulation of communion wafers in a community of crisis-ridden Catholics. I’m interested in the act of exchanging within a comedy of intrigue, and this feature continues that same search against another backdrop.

It seems that, in modern-day Western society, religion has been relegated to a position not a million miles away from reactionary and destructive political trends, beyond its spiritual component which, in and of itself, can simply be enlightening. Which of these two sides are tending towards?
I’m not a fan of being clear about anything, really. I don’t usually make value judgements with the films that I make. I think settling into or insisting on a personal ethical or aesthetic judgement of a certain subject ends up reducing a film’s potency; it makes cinema grow weaker. In this sense, I prefer my interests to come to light after I’ve finished editing and exhibiting my films. In this case, all of the elements come from the Jesuit education that I received up until the age of 18, and from the observations that I was able to make while I felt simultaneously awkward and a part of this peculiar world.

Works with a comedic tone are not so commonplace in arthouse cinema, and your Golden Bear-winning short An Odd Turn also made use of comedy. What fascinates you about it?
Yes, it was the first comedy to win a Golden Bear. Personally, I think of comedy as the ideal platform to bring together things that would appear to be thematically or aesthetically irreconcilable (there’s a reason why surrealists loved slapstick performers so much). Very briefly, and without beating about the bush, comedy allows you to do pastiche and to portray clashes, and I believe that’s very refreshing. With An Odd Turn, comedy was the thing that brought together eroticism and the crisis-stricken Argentinian economy; thus, it allows you to approach such matters through cinema (the pacing, editing and sound) and not through academic theories. I think that in that rash, quick-fire technique demanded of us by comedy, a film can adhere to reality more strongly than through the aesthetic convention of costumbrismo or realism.

Argentinian cinema is going through a rough patch; what kind of support can films rely on in your country at the moment? Your movie already boasts backing from the INCAA (the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts).
The INCAA is crippled – after Javier Milei took over, the institute spent three months without a president (and without signing anything), followed by another month of being audited, and now it’s being run without any kind of knowledge about how production, and artistic expression in general, works. The INCAA has just opened a competition for directors who have already released more than two features or four short films, and they will only choose eight fiction films and two documentaries. What’s happening is very sad. Luckily, in Argentina, there are still other funds available in the city of Buenos Aires (Sponsorship and the National Arts Fund), which are extremely helpful when you’re initially developing a project; there are also funds for filmmakers from the provinces and for films that can be shot outside Buenos Aires.

Are you aiming to look for European partners in particular, or also those in Latin America or another part of the world? What type of partners are you seeking specifically?
At the moment, we are looking for partners from wherever; the frailty of Argentinian cinema makes it necessary for us to find partners who understand our situation on a human level, and not only in economic terms.

Do you already have a fixed schedule set up for production?
2025 will be a year of development and searching for funding; the idea is to film it in 2026.

(Translated from Spanish)