The Berlinale’s Forum independent sidebar has announced the lineup for its 2020 edition that includes several Latin American titles in their world premiere, including Raúl Ruiz’s unfinished 1967 debut feature The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror / El tango del viudo y su espejo deformante, which has been selected as opening night film.
Ruiz shot the material in Chile in 1967, but was unable to complete it before going into exile in 1973. Editor, director and Ruiz’s widow Valeria Sarmiento has now transformed it into a finished film via various elaborate techniques. The film experiments with its own temporality in wonderfully idiosyncratic fashion, as it encompasses the half-century since it was originally shot and allows its plot to run forwards and backwards; in the latter case, quite literally.
The other Latin American titles having their world premiere in the Forum sidebar at the Berlinale are Window Boy Would Also Like to Have A Submarine / Chico ventana también quisiera tener un submarino by Uruguayan-born director Alex Piperno; the Cuban-Spanish production Entre perro y lobo by Irene Gutiérrez; the Brazilian films Light in the Tropics / Luz nos trópicos by Paula Gaitán and Divinely Evil / Vil, má by Gustavo Vinagre; and the Argentine films Medium by Edgardo Cozarinsky and Corporate Accountability / Responsabilidad empresarial by Jonathan Perel.
Independently curated and organized by Arsena, Institute for Film and Video Art, the Forum section aims to expand the understanding of what film is, to test the boundaries of convention and open up fresh perspectives to help grasp cinema and how it relates to the world in new ways. The 70th editon of the Berlin Film Festival will take place February 20 - March 1.
