Behind the scenes Whisky (2004)
Whisky, the Uruguayan film that became an instant landmark of 21st-century Latin American cinema, directed by Pablo Stoll and the late Juan Pablo Rebella, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Two decades after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2004—where it won both the Regard Original Award and the FIPRESCI Prize—this deadpan dramedy remains a quietly powerful follow-up to their 2001 debut 25 Watts, and continues to inspire new generations of Uruguayan filmmakers with its minimalistic wit.
Whisky follows Jacobo (Andrés Pazos), the owner of a modest sock factory, through the quiet monotony of his daily life. Marta (Mirella Pascual), his reserved right hand, maintains a strictly professional relationship rooted in routine. Their fragile equilibrium is disrupted when Jacobo learns that his estranged brother Herman (Jorge Bolani) is visiting from Brazil. Faced with the impending reunion, Jacobo asks Marta to pose as his wife. Balancing absurdity and melancholy, this delightful comedy explores the unspoken tensions and emotional silences between its characters.
The film’s credits read like a who’s who of Uruguayan cinema, featuring producer-editor Fernando Epstein, cinematographer Bárbara Álvarez, actor and production designer Gonzalo Delgado, and writer-directors Federico Veiroj and Manolo Nieto among its creative team.
As part of the film’s 20th anniversary festivities—including a special screening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York City on Wednesday, April 9—Cinema Tropical’s Carlos A. Gutiérrez sat down with co-director Pablo Stoll and producer Fernando Epstein to reflect on the making of Whisky, its international reception, and its lasting impact on Latin American cinema.
I’d like to begin by exploring the origins of your friendship before the creative collaboration. How did you all meet? And when did you realize you wanted to make films?
Pablo Stoll (PS): Fernando (Epstein), Juan Pablo (Rebella), and I met in college. I enrolled in Communication Sciences because I wanted to do something close to cinema. Saying "cinema" would have sounded pretentious at the time as there was very little film production in Uruguay back then. What I really wanted to do was make comics. But I was never a good illustrator, and I hadn’t found the right outlet for that interest.
When I was 16, I signed up for a video course—we didn’t call it cinema, we called it “video,” because we felt like cinema didn’t really exist in our context. In that course, by chance, I met Arauco Hernández, who I later ran into again at the Catholic University, along with Gonzalo Delgado, a screenwriter who also worked as the production designer on 25 Watts and Whisky.
25 Watts (2001)
Little by little, we got to know Fernando and Juan Pablo, and a group of friends started to form around shared interests. We were heavily influenced by the films we were watching at the Cinemateca—I especially remember Pulp Fiction—and we’d share VHS tapes with each other. But there wasn’t some defining moment where we all said, “Hey, let’s make a movie.” That came later.
At first, it was just hanging out, watching TV together, discovering alternative rock, and doing what we normally did—walking around the city, drinking beer, and talking about all these shared interests. There was a certain melancholy of the loser, to put it better.
Eventually we started writing scenes, mostly in parallel to what we were doing at university. Juan and I would write, Arauco would shoot, Fernando started working on sound and then we moved on to editing and at one point when we had to finish the course, we gave a little coup d'état and decided that we were going to make something like a medium-length film, that is, as close to a feature film as we could.
We had already finished college when we entered a contest organized by an institute in Uruguay to make a music video for a local band. I was the producer, Juan Pablo was set to direct, and Fernando would edit. Fortunately, we had the support of Fernando’s workplace to handle the editing. The director of the Film Institute, Luciano Álvarez, had been one of our professors. With the prize money from the contest, which was quite generous, we made the video for song Nico by the Uruguayan band Exilio Psíquico, led by a friend who later contributed music to 25 Watts. On that project, we worked with Manolo Nieto, another college friend. The protagonist was Federico Veiroj, the photographer was Bárbara Álvarez. In a way, that project laid the foundation for building our team and network of friends.
What was the process of finishing 25 Watts and going to Rotterdam like? Do any memories from the festival stand out?
Fernando Epstein (FE): We edited the film at the place where I was working at the time as an advertising editor. By then, there were already two versions of Avid: one focused on advertising and another dedicated to film projects. 25 Watts was edited on the same computer where Beatriz Flores Silva’s In This Tricky Life (En la puta vida, 2001) was being assembled — which later became the biggest box office hit in Uruguayan cinema. At one point, we crossed paths with Beatriz, showed her a rough cut of the film, and she suggested we apply for the Hubert Bals Fund — which we’d never even heard of.
We had heard of the Rotterdam Film Festival, though. We were shooting on 16mm, and since there were no labs in Montevideo, we had to develop the film in Buenos Aires. There was no scanner at the port at the time, so every five days, I’d travel with a suitcase full of 16mm film cans. We had also made an arrangement with the Fundación Universidad del Cine (FUC)— which had a lab operated by Cobi Migliora, the great cinematographer who later shot Lisandro Alonso’s Los muertos. Cobi wasn’t exactly known for being punctual, so our digitalization process was slow and painful. It was at the FUC that we heard a film by alumnus Pablo Trapero—Crane World (Mundo grúa, 2001)— had won the Tiger Award at Rotterdam.
Beatriz’s suggestion stayed with us, and we decided to apply. Eventually, a fax arrived at my dad’s factory — it was an official invitation from the Rotterdam Festival. We were thrilled, especially with the news that the film would be in competition. But we were also stressed, because we had no idea how we were going to physically get the film there. Thankfully, a friend stepped in and sponsored us so we could finish the 16mm development and strike a 35mm print to bring to the festival.
PS: We were invited to stay for the full ten days of the festival, but 25 Watts was scheduled to premiere during the first weekend. The screening was both cathartic and nerve-wracking. To this day, it's a feeling I can’t quite put into words.
That night, the film also screened at Pathé—a massive theater in one of Rotterdam’s main squares. An Argentine director, whose name I can’t remember, turned to us and said, “Guys, this is the Bombonera [Boca Juniors’ stadium].” That’s when we realized just how steep the room was, and how many people were there, genuinely interested in seeing our project. It felt like our baptism by fire in the world of film festivals. Seeing those characters we’d created projected on such a huge screen, and received by such a warm audience, was deeply rewarding.
Whisky (2004)
FE: I remember Bárbara, our cinematographer, stepped out of the theater at one point. I went to look for her and found her at the party venue nearby, which overlooked the Rotterdam port. I asked, “What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?” And she said, “I’m so happy it actually makes me sad, because I don’t think I’ll ever be this happy again.”
PS: I also remember that second screening at Pathé — it felt monumental. We were sitting in the last row, practically against the projection booth wall. Juan Pablo was up there, telling everyone how happy he was that only four people had walked out. I couldn’t believe how massive everything felt.
Fernando was sitting next to a Colombian woman who kept laughing — a contagious, guiding laugh that rippled through the entire theater. It was surreal to hear someone I’d never met responding so viscerally to something I had written. Her laughter transported me right back to the moment those lines were conceived. To me, that’s the real magic of cinema: the possibility of that kind of physical, emotional connection with an audience.
It’s often said that the second film is the hardest to make—and in your case, it seems to hold true. 25 Watts was made without pretensions, and then suddenly it exploded. What was it like to manage the weight of those expectations while putting Whisky together?
FE: With 25 Watts, we went full circle: we built the story, shot it, edited it, and even handled distribution ourselves. It was a huge amount of extra work on top of everything else we were already doing. The launch was intense. We had a lot of press following the award in Rotterdam, and then more recognition at the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI). That momentum sparked an international journey for 25 Watts, which reached places as far as the Museum of the Moving Image in New York—with Carlos' help. And all of that involved mailing 35mm prints from a lab in Buenos Aires, coordinating things by fax—and I was the one handling all of it.
At the same time, in my work as an editor, I was also working on a documentary about Uruguayan and Israeli survivors of the Treblinka concentration camp. So there was a lot going on. And while I was juggling all of that, Juan and Pablo were telling me they were writing something new.
Behind the scenes Whisky (2004)
25 Watts was released in Argentina the weekend before the economical meltdown of 2001. The world around us—as we knew it—was beginning to fall apart, and the social explosion in Argentina swept through Uruguay too. My father lost his sock factory in that crisis. I was caught in the middle of all that financial and personal upheaval when Juan and Pablo started talking about the Whisky screenplay.
PS: Around that time, Fernando got a scholarship and left for a couple of months, so it was just Juan and me starting to write a version of the film we didn’t really like. The two of us—both unemployed—would meet up every day to do nothing.
Juan was very obsessive. He had taken all the VHS transfers of the film and was meticulously writing down timecodes in a notebook to figure out where we could make strategic edits. He was constantly editing the film in his head, and I think that kind of mental montage created the need to write — born out of tedium.
A script competition came up in Spain, so we decided to submit something just to see if we could win some money. We had a lot of ideas that felt like extensions of 25 Watts—stories that seemed to belong to the same universe. One day, Juan said, “Remember Fernando’s dad’s sock factory? That would be a great setting.” We started to imagine what could happen there and came up with the idea of a fake couple—a very classic romantic comedy trope that felt like it was asking to be explored differently.
We wrote the first ten-page treatment and submitted it to the contest—which, of course, we didn’t win—but it stayed with us. Then Fernando came back, and things relaxed a bit with 25 Watts, but we were still dealing with the shock of the festival circuit and this new world of cinema, where the perpetual question was: “What are you going to do next?” And we had no idea. We never imagined what we were doing would actually exist. Meanwhile, there was Pablo Trapero, for instance, who already had three more films in mind.
Whisky (2004)
We went to Cine en Construcción [organized by Cinélatino, Rencontres de Toulouse in 2002], where we met a lot of other Latin American filmmakers — Ana Katz, who was there with El juego de la silla, and Lucrecia Martel, who had just released La Ciénaga and was already working on The Holy Girl. That’s when we understood: this is how it works.
When we came back, we decided to really confront the idea. We shared it with Gonzalo Delgado, and he agreed to write with us if we fully committed to it — we called it “the film about the old people and the socks.” While we were writing, Uruguay was still deep in the economic crisis. Every time Juan and I came back to Montevideo from an international screening for 25 Watts, things at home had gotten worse.
Some people say Whisky is a film about that crisis. We never set out to make a film about the crisis, but it was clearly there. The script came together from our own experiences, from conversations and advice from friends, but also from things we were observing—including the absurd humor of how much effort went into making something as mundane as a sock. There’s a whole life there that often goes unnoticed. In a way, the film ends up being a kind of documentary on how socks are made—while bigger things are happening.
Regarding the comedic tone of Whisky, its humor has often been compared to that of Aki Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmush. There are also some narrative similarities with Martín Rejtman, especially that minimalist quality that permeates his films—all of them from the same generation, even sharing producers. Is there a dialogue between Whisky and these elements?
PS: Not on a conscious level, but I really admire what Martín does. In fact, after we finished filming 25 Watts, we saw Silvia Pietro and then went to the Punta del Este festival three days later to see it again, and it blew our minds. We had a long conversation with him, and then, in Rotterdam, he was the first person we bumped into (and it was a pleasure that he still remembered us) when he was premiering The Magic Gloves (Los guantes mágicos, 2004).
For me, Rejtman is like Howard Hawks: an influence I carry inside, from his films, his literature, and from how deeply he cares about cinema. Both Juan and I see Rejtman, Kaurismäki, and Jarmusch as structural references. They’ve just inhabited and permeated the way we see things.
Whisky (2004)
FE: With Whisky, Juan and Pablo wanted to find humor through sobriety, avoiding excess. That deadpan tone is something I still appreciate. It was a convergence that clearly shaped their writing process and the direction the film took.
It's interesting that, considering all these references, Whisky turned the state of the Latin American film industry at the time on its head. In other words, it took these narratives and pushed them further. And I think that’s why we’re still talking about Whisky twenty years later. You can truly trace its influence clearly on new generations of Latin American and international filmmakers. How do you see these relationships of influence?
PS: Sometimes, I believe Whisky harmed Uruguayan cinema, in the sense that for a moment, it seemed like a formula, but it wasn’t. It was much more of a fluid thing, driven by the desire to tell stories and pursue that notion of absurdity that interested us. Juan used the term “untruthful realism” to describe the kind of cinema we were making.
We had a distaste for what people were calling "lying realism." I think that’s also true of the works of Rejtman and other South American directors. Going back to Whisky in Uruguay, the film sparked a kind of toxic dialogue between boring, slow, festival-oriented, formulaic cinema, and genre cinema, which had more appeal to audiences.
It was a strange feeling, and an odd realization. It was the same for Juan. Twenty years later, it seems like a totally absurd discussion. I feel like Whisky came “too much too soon,” and that wasn’t necessarily good for the development of Uruguayan cinema, which was being shaped in small, steady steps.
Now, when we watch it again, we’re surprised to hear from many young people who tell us they hadn’t seen it because it was the movie their parents liked, or because they were told they wouldn’t like it because of its slowness. So, it's a strange feeling.
DIrectors Pablo Stoll and Juan Pablo Rebella at the set of Whisky
FE: I believe certain cinematic trends around the world create waves in different areas, and we took advantage of a time when Argentine cinema was experiencing a tremendous surge. We began to swim with that current, and from it, we built our own voice, which later spread to Eastern European cinema and other places.
We entered that "trendy" zone, which gave rise to other projects. At the time, we were a production company and business partners, but also part of a community that trained together while making 25 Watts and Whisky. This led to films like La perrera by Manolo Nieto (who had been an assistant director) and Acné by Federico Veiroj (our scriptwriter and actor). It was a movement where making a film didn’t seem like such a wild idea anymore—we had more experience and access to better financing options.
In this country, filmmaking institutions were built from the ground up. The analogy I use is breaking through the ceiling with your head, doing more than what was expected given the material conditions we had. As for influence, I don’t think we should take responsibility for it. Once the film is out, it’s already in the air, becoming something collective and abstract. What feels real to me are the personal relationships formed during the making of the film.
There’s something contradictory about celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary. We appreciate the reception and the awards, but at the same time, it feels like it has become something bigger, almost impossible to fully grasp.
Despite all the milestones in Latin American cinema, why does precariousness still remain such a constant in terms of production?
FE: What happens is that we’re learning that production and talent don’t depend on economic availability—they are two separate things. Nowadays, Uruguay's film budget has doubled, and our national film law has been strengthened to accommodate international services. In this sense, precariousness has decreased. However, this doesn’t mean that our industry is now in the best possible condition.
From left to right: Co-director Pablo Stoll, producer-editor Fernando Epstein, and co-writer Gonzalo Delgado in 2024.
Precariousness made us sharper in our decision-making, more assertive, and effective. I can’t say what Control Zeta Films would have been like if there had been a robust Uruguayan audiovisual program behind it.
But I think the question really comes down to how we define precariousness. For me, what was precarious was the audiovisual infrastructure—how few of us knew how to use filming equipment, and how much the lack of a story weighed on us. But at the end of the day, a film is just a group of people who come together for two or three months around a shared project, and the magic of that time remains in the film.
PS: I don’t know if I’d call it precariousness, but last year, only one 100% Uruguayan film was released, and this year, two or three more will come out. So, I agree with Fernando—it's all about that energy and desire to create. Cooperative films with small budgets like 25 Watts are starting to happen again. Our generation can’t do that anymore, but we should be celebrating the 20th anniversary of films like Whisky.
At that Latin American filmmakers' meeting in Toulouse in 2002, we were all seated at a big table when Argentine filmmaker Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas approached us and said something I’ve never forgotten: “This is a pendulum. Right now, it’s swinging in your direction, and it’s good that you're here, taking advantage of it. But it will swing away. I've gone through three or four pendulums. And I’m still here.”
Uruguayan films need to keep being made the way they were, just a little bit better.
What’s needed now is to ignore the fact that there’s more funding available. Paradoxically, filmmakers should forget a little bit about history—forget that Whisky won at Cannes or that Gigante won at Berlin. New generations should simply want to make the films they want to make, without pretensions. Above all, they need to return to making the kind of cinema they themselves want to see.
Uruguayan films need to continue being produced the way they were before, a little better. What's needed is to ignore that there is much more funding now. And, paradoxically, to forget a little about history—to forget that Whisky won at Cannes and that Gigante [directed by Adrián Biniez] won at Berlin. New generations should want to make the film they want to make without pretensions. Mostly, they need to go back to making the kind of cinema they want to see.
Edited and translated by Natalia Hernández Moreno. Special thanks to Juan Pedro Agurcia.
This is an except of a conversation held between Cinema Tropical’s Carlos A. Gutiérrez, Pablo Stoll, and Fernando Epstein, which will later be posted as an extended podcast.
