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PRODUCTION Switzerland / Paraguay

Shooting has commenced on Arami Ullón’s second documentary Nothing But the Sun

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- The Basel-based director has decided once again to shoot her new film in her native Paraguay, and more specifically in the region of Chaco

Shooting has commenced on Arami Ullón’s second documentary Nothing But the Sun
Director Arami Ullón

Four years after her award-winning first film El tiempo nublado [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Arami Ullón
film profile
]
(winner of the Sesterzio d'Argento Award for First Feature Film in the Regard Neuf section at Visions du Réel in 2014), which tells the story of the deep and complex link the director has with her sick mother in Paraguay, Arami Ullón once again focuses her gaze on the contradictions of her native country.

Interested in digging into the remains of an ancestral and mysterious past, Nothing But the Sun [+see also:
film review
interview: Arami Ullón
film profile
]
is built on the problems that affect the Ayoreo. Permanently stationed in a wooded and fluvial region that extends between Bolivia and Paraguay, the indigenous people of Ayoreo claim the protection of their traditional lands, martyred by illegal logging by landowners who want to use the materials to raise their livestock.

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An unequal battle in which the Ayoreo have to deal with financial pressures that threaten to prolong their agony indefinitely. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in spite of the Paraguayan laws granting them rights, the Ayoreo often find themselves in hostile urban contexts to which they are unable to adapt, which reject them and push them towards marginalisation. A dramatic situation that Arami Ullón, with her distinctive courage, has decided to make public.

Nothing But the Sun, which will be finished in 2020, is presented as a film-journey undertaken by its protagonists. A way of filming that requires various different phases that will take place until 2019.

The film's research and writing phase received international support from the likes of the Cinélatino - Rencontres de Toulouse (2015) co-production market and the San Sebastian Festival Europe-América Latina Foro de Coproducción (2016). Nothing But the Sun was also selected to pitch at the Visions du reel’s Pitching du reel event (2017), as well as receiving the opportunity for development at the IDFA School in 2018.

The new documentary by Arami Ullón is counting on a multicultural team of Swiss, Paraguayan and Ayoreo technicians. These include the Swiss cinematographer Gabriel Lobos (Raving Iran [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Fishing Bodies [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Blue My Mind [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lisa Brühlmann
interview: Luna Wedler
film profile
]
), and the Paraguayan production director Karen Fraenkel, who has worked closely with the director for several years.

Co-produced by Switzerland and Paraguay, Nothing But the Sun has received financing from Zürich Film Stiftung, MEDIA Swiss Desk and Fachausschuss Film und Medienkunst (Basel). The Zurich-based Cineworx Filmproduktion and the director herself are handling production, while the film’s international sales are entrusted to Film Republic. As for Paraguay, the project has received support, during the development phase, from the Secretaría Nacional de Cultura (SNC), and from the FONDEC (which partly contributed to filming). The SNC has not yet participated, as a producer, in the actual filming process. A gap that could potentially be filled by the new SNC administration.

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(Translated from Italian)

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