Iair Said wrote and stars in his feature film directorial debut, Most People Die on Sundays (Los domingos mueren más personas), the Argentine comedy-drama film loosely based on his real-life experiences when his own father died.
He is joined by Latin American stage and screen actor Rita Cortese (Wild Tales, Herencia), Argentine singer Juliana Gattas and Pablo Larrain favorite Antonia Zegers (The Club, The Punishment).
The film had its world premiere in the ACID section at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, and will be released at the Quad Cinema in New York on May 2nd, and at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles on May 9th viaBig World Pictures. Other cities will follow.
Most People Die on Sundays is the story David (Iair Said), a young middle-class Jewish man—corpulent, gay and afraid of flying—who returns to Buenos Aires after the death of his uncle. During the trip home, after a year spent studying in Italy, David learns that his mother plans to disconnect his father’s respirator as there is no chance of the man emerging from a years-long coma.
David will oscillate between living with his mother, alienated by the pain of the imminent loss of her husband, and a voracity to fill his existential anguish, occupying his hours learning to drive, going to specialists cheaper than in Europe, and trying to have sex with any man who shows him a little attention. Circumstances do little to help David mature until he is finally forced to face his father’s mortality head-on and begin thinking about the future in concrete terms.
In an interview with Variety, Iair Said spoke about the film’s real-life inspirations, saying “I have to start by saying that this film is not a true story. My mom asked me to make sure everyone knew it was not real because my first film was a documentary about my family, and she was in that film. But this film is inspired by real life. I wrote it in the three years before my dad died, so while it’s not true, the emotions and the pain are all real. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about in life, so for me, making a film lets me express myself in a way that I can’t with words. It’s easier for me to show my emotions in a film than to speak them.”
Watch the US trailer for Most People Die on Sundays.