“Las Acacias” by Argentine Pablo Giorgelli Wins 2011 Horizons Prize

“Las Acacias” by Argentine director Pablo Giorgelli was awarded on Saturday evening the Horizons Prize, which honors the best Latin American film in the Latin Horizons category at Spain’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

In addition, “Miss Bala” (Miss Bullet) by Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo, and the Brazilian visual story “Historias que So Existem Quamdo Lembradas” (Stories that Only Exist When Remembered) obtained separate honorary mentions, according to the president of the Latin Horizons jury, actor Juan Diego Botto.
Together with Botto on the jury were the coordinator of the International Film School Meetings at the San Sebastian Festival, Javier Martin, and the director of Mexico’s Morella Film Festival, Daniela Michel.

The winner thanked the jury for the prize because “I always wanted to be able to premiere the film in movie theaters and this prize will be a big help toward achieving that.”

“Thanks also to Jose Luis (Rebordinos), director of the San Sebastian Film Festival, and the programming team for choosing my film,” Giorgelli said after receiving the prize that he won against 12 other Latin American films.

It was precisely Giorgelli, winner of the Camera d’Or – for best first work at the last Cannes Festival – also for “Las Acacias,” who talked about the difficulties he has had in getting his film into movie theaters despite its international honors.

“Las Acacias,” a kind of road movie, tells of the relations of a truck driver (German de Silva) with a passenger (Hebe Duarte) and her baby that he has to take across the border from Buenos Aires to Asuncion.

“The basis of the film is a deep personal crisis that coincided with Argentina’s economic crisis, and which obliged me to stop and rethink the whole thing,” the director said.

As a result it took him 10 years to make the movie – time that he said he needed. It was “a long process during which I did what I had to do at each moment.”

During a goodly part of the film the movie-goer only sees the truck driver Ruben inside his truck, driving, until Jacinta appears with her baby, and little by little, subtly, she learns the facts about his life: he has a son that he misses, he is incapable of communicating and is all alone, but he feels better through contact with his female passengers.

“I feel that the film is silent and slow and minimalist at times, but that’s what it’s about: it’s about solitude but also the possibility of being reborn,” Giorgelli said, adding that he is not particularly a fan of this kind of movie: “It just came out that way. The next one could be a musical.”

The prize has a cash award of 35,000 euros (some $47,000), 10,000 of which ($13,500) go to the director of the film, while the remaining 25,000 euros ($33,740) are for the importer of the movie into Spain.

Source: Latin American Herald Tribune