Mario Bellatin

Vienna, 2019 – the end of an era. The smoking ban in public places means that a part of Kaffeehaus culture has disappeared. Of all moments, this is the one that Angeliki chooses to buy an apartment with help from her interior designer friend, Carmen. Angeliki seems to have something against all of them: either the parquet floors creak, the tiles are the wrong colour or she is bothered by the proximity to a restaurant. How will she ever find a new home in this environment? Carmen feels like she’s talking to a brick wall. Moreover, she simply cannot understand why Angeliki is refusing to part with her money. A Journey from Vienna to Malaga, via salt flats overcast by mysterious shadows. A homage to the Austrian capital and the bygone splendour in ordinary things.

«En mars 2018, notre société de production a été chargée par le Ministère de l’Éducation de faire un rapport sur la manière dont les ressources allouées au programme pour “Improving Primary Schools” étaient employées par diverses écoles du Mexique. Nous nous sommes rendus à l’école Thomas More, dans le Michoacán. Dans ce lieu, nous avons découvert une histoire qui ressemblait à un rêve».

The Argentine competition winner, Gonzalo Castro’s Invernadero (Winter House), offers a stylistically elegant if overlong contemplation of the experimental one-armed Mexican novelist Mario Bellatín, a famed prankster who here engages with his daughter and friends (all fictional characters) in an interrogation of biography (itself a central conceit in Bellatín’s fiction).

Composer Marcela Rodríguez and writer Mario Bellatin create an "opera-movie" filming opera rehearsals based on one of Mario's tales.