Mar del Plata: Monteoliva to Helm ‘Clementina’ (EXCLUSIVE)
MAR DEL PLATA– Producer-turned-director Jimena Monteoliva will direct her first solo feature, horror-vengeance story “Clementina.”
To be produced by Crudo Films, the in-development “Clementina” turns on a woman, in shock at the loss of her baby due to her abusive husband battering. Clementina’s trauma is –perhaps– spawning ghosts. Shooting is scheduled to begin at the end of November. Key cast includes Cecilia Cartasegna (“All Night Long”) and Emiliano Carrazzone (Gianfranco Quattrini’s “Planta madre”).
Monteoliva worked as production manager on Pablo Trapero’s prison drama, Cannes Competition player “Lions’ Den,” and Diego Lerman’s Directors’ Fortnight screener, “The Invisible Eye,” a political parable.
Monteoliva and Tamae Garateguy’s genre flic “Night,” screens these days at the 30th Mar del Plata Fest, one of the 13 genre movies in sidebar Midnight Screamings.
Monteoliva is the regular producer of Garateguy’s movies, which include 2010 Argentine Competition winner “Pompeya,” erotic thriller “She Wolf” which played Austin’s SXSW and Fantastic Fest, respectively. “Night” reps the first time that Tamae and Jimena co-direct together.
Starring Martin Slipak (Miguel Cohan’s “No retorno”), Maria Canale (Francisco Varone’s “Road to la Paz”) and Guadalupe Docampo, “All Night Long” turns on Guadalupe, an artist aiming to exhibit at New York’s MoMA. To accomplish that ,she plans a performance set in the desert. What she does not know is that a bloody evening is just to take place. The artist plans will become far more radical than even she had thought.
“It’s a drugs movie with a slasher perfume,” said Garateguy who helped galvanize a low-budget genre production build that has produced some noteworthy titles and an increasing number of increasingly well-known directors and movies over the last 15 years in Argentina.
Garateguy studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York and cinema in Buenos Aires’s state school Teba. She also works as an actress in cinema (“Upa! 2: The Return,” Pablo Torre’s “La mirada de Clara”), in TV and for stage. “Wolf” took a special mention at a Mar del Plata Work in Progress.
Gareteguy co-directed alongside Camila Toker and Santiago Giralt comedy “Upa! 2: The Return” –the sequel to the 2006 hit film-of-an-indie-film-production. “Upa! 2” played –out-of-competion — at the 17th BAFICI Fest this year.
Buenos Aires-based Crudo Films (“Pompeya”) produced “All Night Long,” as well as a second movie included at Midnight Screamings, Nicanor Loreti’s “Kryptonite.”
“Crudo” –meaning “raw” in Spanish– is a declaration of principles, said company’s Rogelio Navarro.”It’s almost an artistic positioning: All our films have a bold aesthetic coherence, independently of budget.”
Midnight Screamings prize is screening facilities at the 7th Ventana Sur, whose Latin American Fantastic Market runs Nov. 30-Dec. 4.
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