Archive of films Distinguished Citizen / El ciudadano ilustre

Spain / Argentina
2016, 117 min

Section: Variety Critics’ Choice
Year: 2017

Five years after winning the Nobel prize, novelist Daniel Mantovani (Oscar Martínez) gets an invitation to receive an award from his hometown. It’s been 40 years since he’s been back, despite using the city as the setting for all his stories, and his return provides both humor and poignant insights.

Synopsis

Taciturn novelist Daniel Mantovani (Argentine star Oscar Martínez, who won the best actor prize at the Venice film festival for his performance) has an ambivalent relationship to fame: It has brought him the kind of wealth few authors can ever imagine, yet he’s concerned such success means he’s not the challenging writer he was at one time — an idea that’s amusingly conveyed in the opening scene, when he voices his fears while receiving the Nobel prize. Five years later, the Barcelona-based author remains too much in demand, politely declining most offers, until he gets a letter from his hometown of Salas, Argentina. It’s been four decades since he’s been back, despite using Salas as the setting for all his stories, and his return provides not only humor, but poignant insights into such themes as the burden of success, lost ideals, and whether artists truly give back to the communities they’ve creatively mined for decades.

Jay Weissberg

About the director

Mariano Cohn (b. 1975, Villa Ballester, Argentina) and Gastón Duprat (1969, Bahia Bianca, Argentina) are Argentinean directors and producers who began working together in the mid-1990s. Since the end of that decade they have created several innovative television formats and shows, such as “Télevisión Abierta” (1999), “Cupido” (2000), “Cuentos de terror” (2001), “El Amante TV” (2007), and in 2003 they set up and ran the TV culture channel Ciudad Abierta. Their interest in experimental film and video has led to the shooting of over twenty works presented at film clubs and museums of modern art at home and abroad. The feature-length documentary Yo Presidente (2006) won the top prize at the International Festival of Independent Cinema from Mexico and Best Documentary at Malaga. Other internationally successful projects include The Artist (El artista, 2008) and The Man Next Door (El hombre de la lado, 2009 – awarded at Mar del Plata and Sundance).

Contacts

Film Europe s.r.o.
V Jámě 1, 110 00, Praha 1
Czech Republic
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.filmeurope.cz

Latido Films
C/ San Bernardo, 20, 2º8, 28015, Madrid
Spain
Tel: +34 915 488 877
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.latidofilms.com

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About the film

Color, DCP

Section:	Variety Critics’ Choice

Director:	Mariano Cohn, Gastón Duprat
Screenplay:	Andrés Duprat
Dir. of Photography:	Mariano Cohn, Gastón Duprat
Music:	Toni M. Mir
Editor:	Jerónimo Carranza
Art Director:	María Eugenia Sueiro
Producer:	Fernando Sokolowicz
Production:	Aleph Media
Coproduction:	Televisión Abierta, Magma Cine, A Contracorriente Films, Arco Libre
Cast:	Oscar Martínez, Dady Brieva, Andrea Frigerio, Nora Navas, Manuel Vicente
Sales:	Latido Films
Distributor:	Film Europe s.r.o.

Guests

Ivan Hronec

Cinema Representative, Distributor, Festival Organizer, TV Representative