BUENOS AIRES — Lightning strikes twice. Flying the flag for the commercial potential of first-time Argentine directors and marking the kind of lightning deal which adds energy to a market, Vicente Canales’ Film Factory has swooped on “The Good Intentions,” an Argentine movie which was the big winner Friday at Ventana Sur’s Primer Corte.
It played on Thursday morning in rough-cut at Ventana Sur’s Primer Corte, drawing applause from a seasoned international arthouse buyer audience. Film Factory has acquired world sales rights outside Argentina.
Directed with brio by Argentina’s Ana García Blaya in her first feature outing, confirming a director and – as importantly these days, a writer – to track, “Las buenas intenciones” (The Good Intentions) will be ready for delivery by late February, said Tarea Fina producer Juan Pablo Miller.
Closed in a matter of hours in the kind of dealmaking which adds energy to ever more cautious arthouse markets, the deal has been made on a movie from a relative late bloomer whose formation is crucially as much in screenwriting as direction.
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That can be seen in an accesible arthouse movie which drew praise at Ventana Sur for ringing true, so packing an emotional punch, in its portrait of a dynamic daughter-dysfunctional father relationship, where Amanda, shunted between her parents, receives a proposal from her mother’s proposal to leave Argentina and her shambolic father. Her decision will mark her life.
“‘The Good Intentions’ is a love story between a father and his children,” García Blaya said.
For Canales, “it’s a film which is full of energy and reality, which you enjoy from beginning to end, which has life, can be dramatic, but is a hymn to life and also a broader public film, which is also important.”
“The Good Intentions” is produced by Juan Pablo Miller at Tarea Films, Nos’ Joaquin Marques and Juana García Blaya at Bla Bla.
“A highly sensitive story which tugs the heartstrings of any kind of spectator,” said Miller, “The Good Intentions” “rings true” said Marqués and Juana García Blaya.
Not for nothing, from 2011 Ana García Blaya studied and then worked with Pablo Solarz (“Intimate Stories,” “The Last Suit”), one of Argentina’s preeminent screenwriters. Argentina’s greatness, whether new or old directors, still rests on its screenwriting.
CREDIT: Vicente Canales
