Santiago Mitre’s award winning film Paulina will open Friday, June 23, 2017, at New York’s Spectacle Theater (located on 124 S 3rd St, Brooklyn, NY), before a national expansion during summer 2017.
Santiago Mitre’s (El Estudiante) Paulina is the winner of the Nespresso Grand Prix Award and the Fipresci Award at Cannes (Critics’ Week) – as well as eight Best Actress awards given to Dolores Fonzi (Truman, The Aura, Plata Quemada).
Both a remake and a “potent update” (Eye for Film) of Daniel Tinayre’s La Patota (1960), Paulina is a complex exploration of the ethics of political action and a provocative character study of a social justice activist – and her unsettling choices in the face of violence and social discrimination. Set in a racially and politically marginalized community in Argentina’s Northeast, the film tackles the moral ambiguities of those who seek to aid and ally themselves with the disadvantaged from their positions of privilege.
When the film begins, Paulina (Dolores Fonzi, in a searing performance) leaves a promising legal career in the shadow of her politically-powerful father to work as a school-teacher in a rural village, on the border with Paraguay and Brazil. Paulina speaks no Guaraní and her teenage students artfully parry her attempts to lift them into political consciousness.
These uneasy encounters, and subtly observed civics lessons, echo disturbingly in the aftermath of a violent sexual assault by a group of young men. Paulina’s decisions in its wake, portrayed without judgment by Fonzi, mercilessly test her relationships and core beliefs.
Awards
Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival (Critics’ Week – 2015)
FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes Film Festival (Critics’ Week – 2015)
Horizons Award, San Sebastián Int’l Film Festival
Grand Jury Prize, Miami International Film Festival
Torino FIlm Festival – Special Jury Award
Best Actress Winner
– Dolores Fonzi –
Premio Fenix (Mexico’s Academy Awards)
Beijing International Film Festival
Premio ACE 2017
Biarritz International Festival of Latin American Cinema
Platino Ibero-American Film Award
Argentinean Film Critics Association
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Argentina
Torino Film Festival