In an increasingly common pan-regional alliance for Latin America, four Latin American companies, Argentina’s Maravilla Cine, Chile’s Don Quijote and Rampante and Uruguay’s Cordon Films, are teaming to co-produce real life-inspired drama “Marilyn,” Argentine Martin Rodriguez Redondo’s feature debut.
The project was selected for San Sebastian’s 2014 Europe-Latin American Co-production Forum, Chile’s Sanfic industry lab and Australab-FicValdivia.
Winner of an Argentine INCAA Film Institute script contest and an Ibermedia co-production award, “Marilyn” is based on the true story of Marcelo B, today called Marilyn, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for shooting dead his mother and brother with a shotgun in 2009 and then was partner in Argentina’s first gay marriage in prison.
The film will roll from July, produced by Maravilla Cine’s Buenos Aires-based Paula Zyngierman, production manager on standout Argentine films such as Adrian Caetano’s “Chronicle of an Escape” and Lucia Puenzo’s “The Fish Child.”
One of Chile’s fastest-rising producers, Giancarlo Nasi (pictured), co-producer of Colombian Cesar Acevedo’s “Land and Shade,” winner of 2015 Camera d’Or award at Cannes, and producer of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight player “Chile Factory,” co-produces via outfits Don Quijote Films and Rampante Cine.
From Uruguay, Micaela Sole co-produces at Cordon Films, a regular co-production partner on Latin American and European film projects, and an outfit co-owned by actor-director-producer Daniel Hendler, a best actor winner at Berlin for Daniel Burman’s “Broken Embrace.”
Co-penned by Martin Rodriguez Redondo and Mariana Docampo, “Marilyn” focuses on the character of Marcos, a boy who lives in a farm on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. While his father does the heavy work, he stays at home with his mother and transvestites when he is alone.
After the father’s death, Marcos is forced by his mother to take charge of the farm work for the first time, suppressing his feminine behavior. Verbal and physical violence against Marcos grows. One morning he explodes.
“We separated ourselves from the real people who inspired the film to achieve a perspective that allowed us to work with the ideas we wanted to raise, show the abuses of class and genre in social and private spheres, and the personal story of a young boy who commits one of the more morally condemned crimes in all cultures,” said Martin Rodriguez Redondo.
“’Marilyn’ is a film about identity. About how we distance ourselves from our parents and their desires to become individuals with our own desires. This is the story of a tragic and desperate character who finds that the only way to leave his mother is to kill her,” he added.
Open all references in tabs: [1 - 8]