Puan by María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat
The San Sebastian Film Festival announced this morning some of the titles that will be competing for the Golden Shell in the official competition in its 71st edition, which includes two Argentine films, the most recent productions by directors Martín Rejtman, María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat.
Rejtman will participate in San Sebastián’s official selection for the first time with The Practice / La práctica, a comedy starring actor Esteban Bigliardi as a yoga teacher in a marital crisis. Several of Rejtman’s previous films have been shown in San Sebastian: Silvia Prieto (1999) was in the Made in Spanish section, The Magic Gloves (2004) and Two Shots Fired (2014) in Horizontes Latinos, and the short film Shakti (2019) in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera.
The Practice, also starring Mirta Busnelli, Manuela Oyarzún, Amparo Noguera, Camila Hirane, Gabriel Cañas, and Catalia Saavedra, follows Gustavo and Vanessa as they separate and have to revise their projects together. Both are yoga teachers. Gustavo is Argentine, Vanessa is Chilean. The trip to India is cancelled. Vanessa takes the apartment and leaves the studio they shared, leaving Gustavo homeless. As a result of the accumulated stress, Gustavo injures his knee and replaces yoga: first with quadriceps exercises and then with the gym. But gradually he gets his life back on track and starts practicing again.
Alché and Naishtat jointly directed Puan, in which Marcelo Subiotto and Leonardo Sbaraglia play two professors at odds over a university chair. Alché won the Horizontes Award with her first feature film, A Family Submerged (2018), and this year she is also an Ikusmira Berriak program resident. For his part, Naishtat won the Silver Shell for best director with Rojo (2018), which also won the awards for best actor and best photography, and before this he took part in the Horizontes Latinos section (History of Fear, 2014).
In Puan, Marcelo has devoted his life to teaching philosophy at the Public University of Buenos Aires. When his mentor Professor Caselli dies unexpectedly, Marcelo expects to become the new head of Department. However, his plans turn upside down with the unexpected arrival of Rafael Sujarchuk. Charismatic and seductive, Rafael returns from his pedestal in European universities to claim the vacant position for himself. Marcelo's clumsy efforts to prove he is the right candidate will trigger a philosophical duel, while his life—and the country—enter a spiral of chaos.
