those impacted. A scene from the film presented by Lucía Puenzo
Yesterday, Argentine director Lucía Puenzo attended the premiere, at the San Sebastián Festival, of her film “Los Impactados”. The film tells the story of Ada, a girl who survives a lightning strike, but not before beginning to suffer hallucinations and confusion that change her life and bring her closer to a group of people affected by the same accident. “When lightning hits you, your entire physical and mental structure is pulverized,” one of the protagonists tells Ada at the beginning of the film. Although it has paranormal airs, the film follows “a path that could happen to a survivor” of the effect of lightning, Puenzo explained to the audience at the end of the screening. One of the consequences of such an episode are scars that reflect the path of lightning on the body, known as Lichtenberg figures. “It was a little after” the discovery of these scars “that we began to think about this story,” added the director. The film stars Chilean actress Mariana Di Girolamo.
Since her successful first feature film “XXY” (2007), with which she won the Grand Critics’ Prize at Cannes and the Goya for best foreign film, Puenzo has directed four more films, and has alternated her career as a director with that of a screenwriter. and novelist. The film that she presents in San Sebastián competes in the Horizontes Latinos section, dedicated to Latin American cinema, which, in this edition, has a large presence of Argentine works.
“The Red Island,” a portrait of the final days of French colonial rule of Madagascar, by Robin Campillo, was another of yesterday’s main attractions. “This excessive ambition”, the three-part documentary series about the Spanish musician C. Tangana, was also shown in a Velodrome stadium. “I have put my life at the disposal of my friends” filmmakers, its protagonist, C. Tangana, said about the documentary. Performed by the Spanish Quim Gutiérrez and the French Nadia Tereszkiewicz, “L’île rouge” (The Red Island) competes for the Golden Shell and is inspired by the childhood of its director, Robin Campillo, spent in part in French military bases in abroad. It is set in Madagascar in the early 1970s, at the twilight of colonialism, and its protagonist is Thomas, a 10-year-old boy who sees, hears and guesses, while dreaming of being the intrepid heroine Fantômette. “It is the portrait of a paradise from which you can see the Iron Curtain,” Campillo explained to the press. “The illusion of colonialism, paradise, is ending” and “violence is always behind the scenes.” Campillo, born in Morocco in 1962, is the director, among others, of “120 battements par minute” (“120 beats per minute”), Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, and screenwriter of “Entre les murs” (“The class “), Palme d’Or in Cannes.
In this way, the Basque city’s contest that concludes tomorrow enters its final stretch in all sections, with no clear favorites for its highest prize, the Golden Shell. The only film in competition that remains to be shown today is the Japanese one. Great Absence”, by director Kei Chika-Ura. The pool of the Diario Vasco, the great newspaper of San Sebastián, prepared from the scores of Spanish critics, places as the best valued work “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”, by the American debutante Raven Jackson, followed by “O Corno” , by local director Jaione Camborda. Below are films that raised more expectations among viewers and they liked them more, such as “Un amor”, by the Spanish Isabel Coixet, or the Argentine “Puan”, by the Argentine duo María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat. It is difficult, as always, for critics to like the same films as the public.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
