Isabella by Matías Piñeiro
Two Latin American filmmakers will be competing in the maiden edition of Encounters, the new competitive section of the Berlin Film Festival. The German festival will host the world premiere of Argentine director Matías Piñeiro’s newest film Isabella, and Colombian director Camilo Restrepo’s debut feature Los Conductos.
Isabella marks the fifth installment in Piñeiro’s Shakespeare series, narrating contemporary fictions about the women roles in the comedies of William Shakespeare. Starring Piñeiro regulars Maria Villar and Agustina Muñoz, the film follows Mariel, an actress from Buenos Aires who tries to win, over the course of two years of auditions, the role of Isabella, the heroine of the comedy Measure for Measure. On a road bordered by frustration and the idea of success, Mariel finds Luciana again and again, an old theater companion who acts as a kind of brilliant shadow, a destiny she cannot avoid, that illuminates and bewitches her at the same time. Isabella unfolds like a jigsaw puzzle of the difficulty of precisely defining the color of our desires.
After several successful short films, including Cilaos (2016) and Impression of a War (2015), screened at numerous international film festivals including Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and Locarno, Restrepo makes this debut feature with Los Conductos. Starring Luis Felipe Lozano and Fernando Úsaga Higuíta, the film follows a character who, after having been on the run, has to face ghosts from his past as he tries to return to society.
The goal of the new Encounters section is to support new voices in cinema and to give more room to diverse narrative and documentary forms in the official program. A three-member jury will choose the winners for Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award. “As a result of passionate research, the 15 titles chosen for Encounters present the vitality of cinema in all of its forms. Each film presents a different way of interpreting the cinematic story: autobiographical, intimate, political, social, philosophical, epic, surreal. The films take the challenge of shaping a world rather than reproducing it,” says Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Drector of the Berlinale.
The 70th edition of the Berlin Film Festival will take place February 20 - March 1.
