Habanero Film Sales has snapped up documentary “I Trust You” (“En vos confio”) from Juan Pablo Gugliotta and Nathalia Videla Peña’s Magma Cine (“The Distinguished Citizen,” “1976”) in one of the more significant of multiple deals struck at a hectic Ventana Sur (VS) in Buenos Aires.
Directed by Agustin Toscano, whose“The Owners” and “The Snatch Thief” participated in Cannes’ Critics Week and Directors’ Fortnight sidebars in 2013 and 2017, respectively, “I Trust You” follows former nuns Susana and Nélida who have been incarcerated at the Tucumán Women’s Prison since 2006, accused of a crime they insist they did not commit. They received a 20-year sentence for allegedly causing the disappearance of a teacher friend, whose body remains undiscovered. Susana and Nélida pray fervently every day for the body to appear and for the mystery to be resolved. Over the past 16 years behind bars, their lives have undergone profound changes.
“This is a film that subverts audience expectations on how a real crime drama is supposed to be recounted. Narrative, documentary, experimental and musical genres are somehow merged together without ever letting us lose sight of how tragic and horrifyingly real the whole situation is,” he noted, adding: “We trust director Agustín Toscano‘s compelling storytelling has the potential to reach diverse audiences; sometimes challenging films are the ones that give us at Habanero the best of surprises,“ said Habanero’s Alfredo Calviño.
Toscano took home the best director award in the “Rebels with a Cause” section of Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival where the docu had its world premiere.
“Conceived as a cross between the language of documentary film and musical opera, the film plays different layers of representation to address the mystery that exists in this tragic story of my province,” said Toscano who notes that “I Trust You” is his first foray into non-fiction cinema.
“To approach it, I chose an operatic device that feeds with fictional musical passages a story that is real. In this way I highlight that the documented reality is full of mysteries, lies and conjectures. The truth, that which we know as truth, escapes from the plot of this film and is transformed into uncertainty and chilling discomfort,“ he added. “We are thrilled to partner once again with Magma Cine in this film that we saw for the first time in Malaga WIP,” said Calviño.
Noting that Magma Cine has been having a good market this year at VS, Gugliotta added that Magma Cine closed a co-production deal for upcoming series “Box 205” with Chile’s Storyboard Media.
Habanero previously handled Magma Cine’s Brazil-Argentine co-production “A voz do Silêncio” by André Ristum in 2018.
Now on its 15th edition, Ventana Sur, co-organized by Cannes’ Marché du Film and by Argentina’s INCAA film institute, ran over Nov. 27-Dec 1.
