Elif Locarno takes the title “Matadero” by Santiago Fillol

Paris-based sales firm Alief has swooped in on the international sales rights to the political thriller Matadero (“The Slaughterhouse”), the long-awaited feature film by Argentine Santiago Fillol, co-writer of Mimosas and Fire. Oliver Lacy. Come.”

Co-written by Fillol, “Matadero” world premiered this week at the main international competition in Locarno.

The film takes a closer look at a historical story through the maddened lens of American director Jared (Julio Perelan), as it depicts a big-screen version of a 19th-century text by Argentine writer Estaban Echeverría, exploiting times and their trappings to create a cinematic piece meant to dig itself into the collective consciousness.

In the face of simmering tensions between landowners and workers, Jared’s lofty vision of his adaptation will push the cast and crew over the edge. As his plots progress, ego and deception prevail.

Fillol is set in rural Argentina in the 1970s, with a nod to the great modern cinema of the era.

Fillol uses the narration as a way to tell the story of the secret film through the memories of Vicenta (Malena Villa), Jared’s young assistant.

In a strong international partnership, “Matadero” was produced by Fernando Molnar and Sebastian Schindel at Argentina’s Maguia Films (“El Patrón”) and Antonio Beta at Prisma Ciné (El Vasco) in Cordoba, along with Andrea Queralt at French 4à4 Productions (“Fire Will Come”). ) and José Angel Alión and Marina Alberti in El Viaje FIlms (“El Mar Nos Mira De Lejos”) and Tània Balló in Catalonia Nina Films.

Alief has gained global sales outside Argentina, France, Spain and Switzerland.

“We are thrilled to have closed the premiere of new Argentine director Santiago Fillol, who has made a political horror film so full of mystery that we feel discerning audiences will accept it,” said Brett Walker, president of Alief.

The cast has been rounded out by Aileen Salas (“Lulu”), Rafael Federman (“Rojo”), Lina Gorbaneva (“La Verdade”), Ernestina Gatti (“Bellarina”), David Sechtman (“Hortensia”), and Gustavo Javier Rodriguez.

For Miguel Angel Juvia, co-star of Matadero, Alief is that rare Latin American film that turns genre tradition upside down with the sure direction of Santiago Fillol and captivating performances by Argentine film stars Julio Perian, Malina Villa, Elaine Salas and Rafael Federman. “

He continued, “We discovered the film in Les Arcs work in progress, where it struck a chord. This final cut will spark serious interest from buyers, the press and festival programmers throughout Locarno and beyond.”

“We believe Alief’s experience in this genre will boost international sales,” added producer Molnar.

Before the world premiere of competition in Locarno Filmmakers of the Present, Fillol spoke with diverse About the project, the artistic sponsorship, and the Argentine film community.

Jared is an outsider who depicts a world that he can only scratch the surface of. Should it be outsiders to culture who produce the art that depicts it?

What interests us in our film is precisely the tension that occurs when that foreign gaze collides with the domestic one: when we see the bloody class struggle that Americans want to represent collide with the gaze of the local actors, who debate this representation being imposed. On them and try to modify this representation, even changing it behind the director’s back.

The most important thing was seeing how these conflicting representations collide in the scenes they attempt to recreate: and the film Jared portrays is essentially done off-screen; We see them work in the folds of brutal acting from which we only get a glimpse of the edges, behind the scenes of those scenes.

The audience sees the politically charged culture war and the metaphors that Echevarría alludes to in his text, not only in Jared’s adaptation of the work but in your adaptation of those themes. Can you talk to it?

We decided that the best way to work on a foundation story like “El Matadero” by Echeverría, written around 1850, was to reverse it from another era. Watch era by era, class violence to the origins of a country of brutal social imbalances, from the 1970s that radically discussed inequality.

Cinema within the cinema is the tool that allows us to approach the history of Argentina and its social struggles in a simple way, because it allows to impose different times and social conditions in each moment on the same shots and people, and thus the tensions of what is represented as a pass from the shot to the far shot with a natural rhythm and vertigo at the same time.

Those who claim class solidarity, those who call for justice, are the ones who separate themselves from the working class on the set. Do you feel that franchisees often feel like revolutionaries?

Each time a class tries to speak on behalf of the other, tensions and conflicts arise around the image that some are proposing to others: Matadero tries to project these tensions, but it’s not a thesis film. It does not propose a thesis, but rather explores a world of conflict that has existed in our country since its inception: the first Argentine novel, “El Matadero” by Echeverría, brutalizes the popular class by proposing a violent and resentful picture where the butchers are angry and kill a wealthy man like a cow in a slaughterhouse: The most emblematic building in the Argentine imagination, the ‘Asado’ plant.

The representation of class struggle and its violence opens us to the overarching problem of what happens when we represent something: is it amplified, revealed, or reproduced? Every age of strong conviction is also an era of intense skepticism. We decided that doubts should have an important place in our work.

Do you feel it helps to have a hand in writing the script you direct?

I wrote the script with two Argentinian friends who are not from cinema, Edgardo Dupre, poet, and Lucas Vermal, philosopher. It was so important because their contributions enriched my view that comes more than cinema. Film writing is a process of various stages. In the cinema we make, scenarios are rewritten between rehearsals and filming. Then in the montage, a profound reinterpretation of the script. The script is like a score that doesn’t even exist to be played during shooting and editing. This process is very organic for many filmmakers. As Truffaut said, “You have to shoot against the text and release on the set,” trying to make sure the material is always alive, and always in motion.

Can you talk to the talent in Argentina, what does the future hold for the film industry?

Argentina is a country full of talents who know how to re-read and bring together its rich traditions and foreign traditions in an original way. The future of Argentine cinema depends on the economic situation and the political will to defend cultural diversity so that it is not only the sons of the bourgeoisie who can make films in the country. In these moments of crisis, the future is completely blurry.