National premieres: three fictions and two documentaries

Three fictions in co-production and a couple of Argentine documentaries made in other lands and other languages, make up the national premieres this week.

“The cry”of Pedro Martín-Calerois a Spanish-Argentine co-production of psychological horror with three linked stories. The first takes place in Madrid, where a young Spanish woman discovers that she is an adopted daughter. His biological mother was a somewhat disturbed French woman who died violently.

The other two parts take place in La Plata, where that woman lived, but things are not so simple. There are a boyfriend and a film student, both with little future, a computer and a camera that can record what the naked eye cannot see, and a very harmful invisible man. This is understood in reference to gender violence and inescapable destiny, and the opportunity for local actresses and technicians is particularly appreciated.

“Lucía’s new boyfriend”of Matias De Leis Correaa co-production with Mexico and Great Britain, which is barely noticeable, inevitably sounds like a play made into a film. Pretty well run, in any case. Everything focuses on an apartment where a couple invites their high school friends to dinner. The detail is that an old friend became a girlfriend with an old acquaintance, very disliked by the host. The scars of the past are reopened, and a secret from that past ends up coming to light. A good cast allows us to overcome the excess of dialogues and common situations. Not much more.

Alien to drama and terror, but sister to loneliness, “Sleep with your eyes open” (in the original, “Dormir de olhos abertos”), by Nele Wohlatz, a co-production from Brazil, Taiwan, Argentina and Germany filmed in Recife, tells the little adventures of a little girl abandoned by her boyfriend practically around the time of departure of the plane that I would take them on vacation.

She still travels, wanders, interacts superficially with the local Chinese, all in pursuit of the elusive fortune, and in some postcards she finds the story of another little woman like her. A peaceful film, with downcast fragments, spoken in three languages, it reflects well the current world of many people. But it was worth more.

“Waiting for the sea”of Lucas Peñaflor and Fernando Gonzáleza co-production of our country with Uzbekistan, was filmed “on the banks” of the Ural. And we use the quotes because that, the fourth largest lake in the world, no longer exists. It dried. Believing that it benefited agriculture and sheep farming, the communist authorities at that time imposed the creation of canals to divert the rivers that flowed into the lake. That’s how it went for them.

The work we now see does not explain this. It only shows a few seconds of old Soviet newsreels from other times. But it shows how people live now. Trucks crossing what used to be the bed of what on maps still appears as a sweet sea of ​​66,000 square kilometers, a fisherman who still mends his nets, children rowing in a boat that rests in the yard, or playing next to remains of ships stranded forever. This is what is called “observation documentary”, the first Argentinean documentary entirely spoken in Karakalpak. Leaves you wanting to know something more.

Well complete with information and reflections, however, and agile, it is the last on the list, “The process”of Sandra Gugliottaa co-production with France that follows the judicial proceedings of a quite striking case. The thing is that some time ago, to get rid of a good number of hierarchical employees, France Telecom (today in other hands) organized a perverse method of ignoring them. Career employees, with positions of responsibility, were isolated, displaced to tasks typical of an intern, forced to feel useless. The intention was to push them onto the street, without kicking them out, without paying them compensation.

Gugliotta I had already covered this in another documentary, “(in)voluntary withdrawals”. But something even worse happened: several of those neglected became depressed to the point of committing suicide. This new film follows the indignant claim of the bereaved and some former employees who were saved at the last minute. They arrive at the Paris courts, confronted by two company lawyers who seem to have come straight out of a satire of Claude Chabrolthe press follows the events, in 2019 the jury decides that it was workplace harassment and must be paid with jail and fines, in 2022 the appeal manages to reduce the charges, but the precedent remains. A pyrrhic triumph, perhaps, but a precedent to deter other companies. In this case, what mattered more was the amount of the fine that France Telecom had to pay. Just 0.002 of its annual earnings.