"I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians"
Idealistic theatre-maker discovers that not everyone wants to be reminded of Romania’s kick-off of the Holocaust.
140'
Romania
IFFR 2019
Javier Belmonte paints large canvases with male nudes in impossible positions. They are really all self-portraits. The artist is 43 and imprisoned in a midlife crisis. He leads the unstructured life of a bohemian, flitting from one woman to another. He always wears a sturdy leather jacket but sits crying in the opera at night. The fact that his ex-wife is expecting and his 10-year-old daughter Celeste seems to be drifting away from him makes him insecure. Family life is what he actually wants. But he's too maladjusted and stubborn to convince himself he is suitable for that.
Belmonte, an atmospheric portrait of a man emotionally caught in the middle, is convincingly carried by protagonist Gonzalo Delgado, who is also a painter in real life and works as a production designer for important Uruguayan films like Whisky and Acné. He looks both exhausted and agitated, and is helpless in a macho away.
IFFR 2019
Programme IFFR 2019
A harvest of outstanding features – the future classics of arthouse cinema.
Read more about this programmeIdealistic theatre-maker discovers that not everyone wants to be reminded of Romania’s kick-off of the Holocaust.
140'
Romania
IFFR 2019
Eight-part series based on the first of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, a history of post-war Italy told through the fates of two young women who are best friends.
469'
Italy
IFFR 2019
At the age of 43, painter Javier Belmonte can no longer camouflage his fear of life and insecurity with bohemian bravura.
75'
Uruguay
IFFR 2019