15/02/2011

“In Buenos Aires, people know hardly anything about each the buildings in which they live. It’s a city in continuous movement, things are constructed, destroyed, reconstructed. Its façade changes, is chaotic, but it has an irresistible charm”. So Says Gustavo Taretto, director of Sidewalls [+see also:
trailer
film profile], about the Argentine capital, which is the heart of his debut feature that premiered in the Berlinale’s Panorama section.

The story revolves around the architecture of Buenos Aires, and its huge buildings divisi da ’medianeras’ (or sidewalls). In two of these apartments live sad, single 30-year-olds single Martin and Mariana.

Like Martin, Mariana has a failed relationship behind her, lives alone is riddled with phobias, spends time on the Internet, dates the wrong people, swims and tries to keep her mind busy. Among the comic highs and lows of daily life, there’s also hope that two similar people might get to know one another and their respective phobias for a happy ending, if even a temporary one.

For the charming Sidewalls – co-produced by Argentinean company Rizoma with Pandora Filmproktion (Germany) and Eddie Saeta (Spain) – Taretto, who used to work in advertising, chose for his female lead the Spanish actress Pilar Lopez de Ayala after seeing her play the French lead in José Luis Guerin’s In the City of Sylvia [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (which played at the 2007 Venice Film Festival).

Speaking on the making of the film, producer Hernán Musaluppi said at today press conference: “At Rizoma we only make films that we like, and they’re all distinct. When you’re an independent producer, you have to choose films carefully, as well as whom you want to spend the next two-three years of your professional life. I chose this film after meeting Gustavo Taretto, and we’re very satisfied with the results”.

Sidewalls is being sold at the European Film Market by The Match Factory.

(Translated from Italian)