Duración: 71 minutos
Director: Gabriel Szollosy
Cada año Celina cruza la Pampa Argentina en su carro para visitar a su hija Fernanda. Entre cientos de desapariciones, fueron ellas dos las únicas que lograron salir vivas de la sala de parto de la dictadura. Para esta madre e hija la única verdad y justicia posible es seguir adelante con sus vidas.
Each year Celina crosses the Argentinean Pampa in her car to visit her daughter Fernanda. Among hundreds of disappearances, they were the only two who made it out alive from the dictatorship’s delivery room. For mother and daughter the only possible truth and justice is to move forward with their lives.
Sinopsis
¿Quién no se ha sentido culpable en la vida? ¿Pero qué sucede cuando el causante de la culpa es el hecho de estar vivo? Celina es un documental sobre una madre y una hija y su lucha por vencer la culpa de seguir con vida. Luego de un exilio en París y su posterior regreso a Buenos Aires, Celina decidió radicarse en el campo, en Uruguay. Rodeada de un puñado de vecinos aferrados a un pasado de prosperidad y trabajo en su alicaído pueblito, Celina parece ser la única persona con esperanzas en el provenir. Dotada de gran carácter y fuerza espiritual, la mujer pasa sus horas entre sus memorias recogidas en apuntes a lo largo de su vida y el trabajo con el vellón de lana, según el arte aprendido de sus antepasados indígenas del Chaco.
Con casi 80 años, cada verano Celina debe regresar a Argentina a renovar su permiso de conducir. Como todos los años el viaje culmina en la casa de Fernanda (36), la menor de sus 7 hijos. Los mil kilómetros que le separan de La Pampa son un viaje en solitario por los recuerdos de Celina: un viaje por un pasado que nunca le abandonará. Celina y Fernanda son las únicas madre e hija que lograron salir vivas de la sala de parto del centro de detención de Campo de Mayo. Cuando le entregaron a Fernanda, la bebé tenía signos de tortura. Por más que la hija lo sabe, Celina nunca pudo hablar con ella sobre esto. ¿Por qué solamente a ella dejaron con vida y la devolvieron a su madre? ¿Qué no es capaz de hacer una madre por salvar a un hijo? Hay detrás de esta historia, entre cientos de desaparecidos, un padre: Osvaldo, el compañero de Celina y padre de la niña. Celina y Fernanda cargan con la cruz de estar vivas y juntas. El próximo verano se volverán a encontrar… “cuando quedamos solas siempre inventamos alguna excusa para no sentarnos a hablar de estas cosas”. Como siempre terminarán regresando a sus pequeñas vidas de todos los días.
Synopsis
Who hasn’t felt guilty in life? Yet most of us can survive with it. But what happens when the cause of the guilt is the fact of being alive? Celina is a documentary about a mother and a daughter and their fight against their guilt for being alive. After her exile in Paris and later return to Buenos Aires, Celina decided to settle in the countryside in Uruguay. Surrounded by a handful of neighbors clinging to a past of prosperity and work in their downcast town, Celina seems to be the only person with hope in the future. Endowed with a great character and spiritual strength, the old woman divides her hours between working with ten children from the rural school in the village and her only neighbor, to whom she teaches to weave the wool and to use the loom, after the art learned from her indigenous ancestors from Chaco. Because of her nearly 80 years, every summer she must return to Argentina to renew her driving license.
Every year the journey culminates in Fernanda’s house (36), the youngest of her seven children. The thousand kilometers that separate Celina from La Pampa are a solo trip by her memories: a journey through a past that never leaves her. Celina and Fernanda are the only mother and daughter that managed to get out alive from the delivery room of the detention center “Campo de Mayo”. When she was presented to Fernanda, the baby had signs of torture. Even though her daughter knows, Celina could never talk to her about it. Why did they tortured her? Why was only her left alive and returned to her mother? What isn’t a mother capable of doing for saving a child? Behind this story, among hundreds disappearances, there is a father Osvaldo, Celina’s partner and father of the child.
Celina and Fernanda bear the cross of being alive and together. Next summer they will meet again… “when we are alone we always focus our attention in something else to avoid sitting and talking about these things.” As always, they will return to their trivial everyday lives. For them, Truth and Justice are concepts as inexplicable as the mystery of life which, despite everything, always keeps going.
Key Creative Personnel
Director, Gabriel Szollosy (Uruguay)
He trained as a filmmaker between Uruguay and Europe. In Hungary he spent a large part of his life, where he made documentaries for France, Spain, Germany and Hungary with Kelonmedia Prods. Arts, Hungarian Television, among others. Master in Production from Discovery Campus since 2003 and Librecine associate producer among Anna and Miklos Jancsó.
Director, Gabriel Szollosy (Uruguay)
He trained as a filmmaker between Uruguay and Europe. In Hungary he spent a large part of his life, where he made documentaries for France, Spain, Germany and Hungary with Kelonmedia Prods. Arts, Hungarian Television, among others. Master in Production from Discovery Campus since 2003 and Librecine associate producer among Anna and Miklos Jancsó.
Winner of the Fipa D’Or at Biarritz (2008), the Felix Oliver Award for Best Documentary Film and Best Uruguayan International Film Festival Uruguay (2002), Best Documentary Film at Atlantidoc Film Festival (2010 and 2012)
Selected Filmography
2012 Adagio
2010 El destello
2007 El otro camino. Tango con Rodolfo Mederos
2008 Stalin City Cantata
2003 Confesiones de un ciudadano
2002 Gyory
2001 Domingueando
Cinematographer Nyika Jancsó (Hungary)
He has more than four decades of experience, during which he has worked for major directors around the world. Stands out the work in movies of her father Miklós Jancsó and her mother Martha Meszaros.
He has participated in productions awarded in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Karlovy Vary, Emmy, BAFTA, among others.
Executive producer Diana Kuellar (Colombia)
Documentary films Producer and director. Master in Creative Documentary from the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Currently PhD student at the Carlos III University of Madrid. She teaches film at the School of Communication at Universidad del Valle, Cali. Creator and director of the International Documentary Diploma in the same institution and president/founder of the Making Docs Foundation, an organization dedicated to the production, dissemination and training in documentary.
Among her productions are: Nueva Venecia (2015) in co-production with Passaparola of Uruguay; La nueva Medellín (2015) in co-production with TS Productions of France; Ines, Memories of a Lifetime (2013); La maldición, el milagro y el burro (2012) for DOCTV.
As director Amor de Lejos (2005) broadcasted in TVC and Señal Colombia and selected in several European festivals, Mamá Choco (2010), screened in over 30 festivals around the world, Best Latin American Documentary at Atlantidoc Film Festival and Best Film in the Ananse Film Festival and De Luna a Luna (2012) part of the collection “Working women: Stories from around the world about the struggle for gender equality at work”, it has been distributed worldwide.
MAKING DOCS
Making Docs is an institution whose goal is the production, promotion and education about documentary film while serving as a bridge between Europe and Latin America.
MAKING DOCS was created in 2005 by a group of Colombian documentary makers in Barcelona [Spain] and then in 2008 in Cali [Colombia]. MAKING DOCS creates and promotes audiovisual documentary projects, while encouraging the emergence of new filmmakers through education and training.
The films produced by MAKING DOCS have focused on topics related to social, anthropological and cultural areas. They denounce the violation of human rights, explore solutions for a sustainable future, bet on encouraging and transforming stories. They talk about communities, persons, peoples, their problems and challenges, their culture and memory, their dreams and solutions. They seek to promote reflection and debate, while presenting original aesthetic and artistic proposal.
This unique position of MAKING DOCS in the heart of documentary academic and creative effervescence makes it an innovative, avant-garde, daring and effective company that has the potential to sketch out a new horizon in Colombian documentary film. It also makes the joint efforts and international co-production easier.
MAKING DOCS has been reconigzed for his work on numerous occasions, both at national (Creation Grants from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, Awards Film Development Fund) and international (DOCTV Latin America, Scholarship Altercine / Canada; Award Latin Union / France; PremioIntermónOxfam / Spain). MAKING DOCS’ films have been presented at several international festivals such as Docúpolis (Spain), Rencontres Cinémas d’Amérique Latine (France), Sanfic (Chile), Itiniraries (Belgium), Refuge in Films (UK), Zoom In (NY, USA ) DocsBarcelona (Spain)
LIBRECINE
Librecine was founded as a creative audiovisual workshop in the early 2000s in Hungary by filmmaker Gabriel Szollosy and journalist Anna Jancsó. We wanted to tell compelling stories that united Europe and Latin America and expressed how we saw the world around us. Librecine also served as a hub for young creatives who wanted to try their hand at creating stories for the screen.
In 2004 we had the opportunity to develop our film Stalin City Cantata about a conductor who recreates a musical work celebrating the birth of the socialist man in Hungary’s first socialist city, within the framework of the Discovery Campus Masterschool. This marked a turn in our activity that would result in the opening of Librecine’s production company in Uruguay.
Today, Librecine’s Uruguayan and Hungarian outfits operate as two separate entities with a distinct voice. Librecine Uruguay continues to be dedicated to documentaries, cultural and educational programming for the international market, while Librecine in Hungary embraced narrative fiction and is especially active in developing family films and dramas with a strong directorial voice.
But despite the distinct focus of the two companies, our belief in the importance of our subjects and our commitment to making quality content marks our work on both sides of the Atlantic, uniting us in an ethos with creativity at its core.
Ficha técnica
Director: Gabriel Szollosy
Productora: Making Docs
Productora: Diana Kuellar
Director de fotografía: Nyika Jancsó
Montajista: Gabriel Szollosy
Co-productores
Libre Cine – Uruguay
Cholula Films – Argentina
Apoyos
Fondo Fomento en la modalidad de Desarrollo de Documental, en el ICAU – Instituto del Cine y el Audiovisual de Uruguay en el año 2013.
Fondo de Desarrollo Cinematográfico – Proimágenes Colombia en el 2015
INCAA – Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales de Argentina 2016, apoyo con 42.000 dólares
Participación Internacional
Mejor documental Iberoamericano en el Festival Internacional de Cine de Zacatecas en México
Taller Documental FICCI Cartagena 2016
Bolivia Lab, Laboratorio de Desarrollo de Proyectos Cinematográficos Iberoamericanos 2016
Encuentro de productores de FICCALI 2016