Argentine filmmaker María Aparicio has won the GdA Director’s Award, the top prize of the 23rd Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days), for her latest feature Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion / A veces me entra tristeza, otras veces rebelión, which had its world premiere in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.
The award was presented by the Giornate degli Autori jury composed of Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón, Italian filmmaker and editor Sara Fgaier, and Hania Mroué, director of Beirut’s Metropolis Cinema. The GdA Director’s Award comes with a €20,000 prize, shared between the filmmaker and the film’s international distributor to support its international promotion.
In announcing the award, the jury praised Aparicio’s film for the way it brings together the intimate and the political through a story of solitude, work, immigration, and privilege. The jury highlighted its delicate attention to small gestures and its merging of “the personal and the collective, fiction and documentary, history and the present.”
An Argentina-Spain co-production, A veces me entra tristeza, otras veces rebelión stars Eva Bianco as Eva, an Argentine woman passing through Madrid who spends her days wandering the unfamiliar city alone. An encounter at the Museo Reina Sofía introduces her to Dante (Roger Koza), an Argentine historian researching labor struggles in his country and the life and work of Juan Bialet Massé. Their meeting becomes the starting point for a meditation on work, displacement, human relationships, and contemporary life.
The film was written and directed by Aparicio, with cinematography by Ezequiel Salinas, editing by Ramiro Sonzini, and sound by Federico Disandro. It is produced by La Buena Hora and Las Flores, with co-production partners in Argentina and Spain, and international sales handled by Paper Moon.
Born in Córdoba, Argentina, Aparicio made her feature debut with Las Calles (2016), followed by the acclaimed Sobre las nubes (2022) and Las cosas indefinidas (2023), which won the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Film. Her latest film continues the filmmaker’s distinctive exploration of the porous boundaries between fiction and everyday life.
Following its Venice world premiere and GdA Director’s Award win, Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion is set to continue its festival run in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.
