Celina Murga

Quote:
A handful of children are left to their own devices in this subtle drama from Argentine filmmaker Celina Murga. Maria (Magdalena Capobianco) is a girl in her early teens whose family lives in an upscale gated suburb. Maria’s parents are going out of town for a week, and rather than leave her with relatives or hire a babysitter, Maria is put in charge of looking after her little sister Sofia (Eleonora Capobianco), with housekeeper Esther (Natalia Gomez Alarcon) serving as a nominal adult authority figure, though for the most part she lets Maria and the others do what they please. With only their parents bedroom off-limits, Maria and Sofia have the run of the house, and soon they and their friends Facundo (Lucas Del Bo), Quique (Federico Pena), Rodrigo (Ramiro Saludas) and Timmy (Mateo Braun) are spending their days exploring the place. As the kids begin creating their own rules to run counter to the ones their absent parents set down, Esther brings a young relative, Fernando (Gaston Luparo), to play with them, and the privileged kids begin to get a notion of the ways of the outside world. Una Semana Solos (aka A Week Alone) was an official selection at the 2008 Buenos Aires Film Festival.Read More »

Plot
Nicolás lives in a small town in the Argentinian province of Entre Ríos. His father Jorge is a respected doctor who claims the privilege of leading a double life with two families. Seen through the eyes of Nicolás, his oldest son, Jorge is a man who will not allow himself be called ‘Dad’ and who, after a day they spend together, returns to his other family which he has privileged with much greater financial support. Nicolás takes on the role of a father: he looks after his siblings, comforts his mother and takes care of financial matters. The inconsistency of these parallel worlds becomes even more evident when Jorge calls upon Nicolás to follow in his footsteps. He is to become a doctor, too, and to take over the ranch his father inherited and manages in a colonial manner. Unperceived by the people around him, the boy starts to nurse rebellion against his father’s authoritarian ways and machismo, and against the open secret which everyone knows but which everyone ignores.
(from berlinale’s cat.)Read More »