Certainly one of Argentina’s new filmmaking skills to observe, Sundance Institute Latin Fellowship recipient Ana Bovino has simply acquired personal funding for her documentary undertaking “The Nights” (“Las noches”) from heavyweight doc participant Jane Ray, founding father of Cat Flap Media and guide inventive director of UK funding physique The Whickers.
Shopped at varied co-production markets together with Chile’s Conecta 2025 the place it received the Cannes Docs Award and a ticket for this 12 months’s Cannes Docs Highlight, Bovino’s movie debut is now competing for the €15,000 ($17,200) Final Push Award on the ECAM Forum co-production market in Madrid, working over June 9/11.
Born out of Bovino’s want to reimagine the Center Jap folktales “One Thousand and One Nights” and Sheherazade’s quest to free girls from violence by means of storytelling, “The Nights” is a portrait of La Pichi, a larger-than-life lady residing on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, who turns her life into tales, night time after night time. “Born in a territory and body on the margins, she uses humor, imagination, and irreverence to reclaim her voice and identity,” reads the logline.
Requested how she discovered La Pichi, Bovino stated she got here to her in 2020, as a part of an open casting for “The Nights” which was initially meant to be a filmed theatre play with a various vary of novice actors as narrators “à la Sheherazade.”
“From the very outset, La Pichi blew us away with her gift as a storyteller and ability to narrate her own story, often with poetry and touches of magic. She was our Sheherazade! I quickly left my stage-to-film idea – although the play did happen, and ended up with La Pichi as main protagonist of ‘The Nights.’”
For Bovino, La Pichi’s putting persona, storytelling expertise, dignity, but in addition her eye-catching attractive curves and 120kg made her a natural-born central character. “She does define herself has being fat; it’s her political identity,” stated Bovino who constructed the narrative arc as “a cinematic book, tracing La Pichi’s journey, from imposed shame to pride, pleasure and the possibility of being loved, not in spite of her body but because of her body.”
Quizzed about her resolution to board the movie, Fay advised Selection she was actually “blown away” by the tough minimize of “The Nights” which was showcased on the Conecta doc market 2025 in Chile.
“Surely, there is not a woman in the world, and probably a fair few men, who do not pause at the mirror, suck in their cheeks or their tummy and secretly wish they were more svelte,” she quipped. “I knew that a documentary with a challenging yet deeply compassionate focus on a super-curvaceous woman would resonate internationally.”
“Jeannie Finley’s hugely popular and critically acclaimed ‘Your Fat Friend’ (2023) had taught us that,” Fay conferred, “but ‘The Nights’ is so much more. The main character La Pichi is a star; a completely captivating Scheherazade, luring us in across ‘A Thousand and One Nights’ through her world, the back streets of Buenos Aires as she weaves her stories in order to survive. By turns laugh out loud funny, then searingly poignant, La Pichi brings light, warmth, and the promise of hot sex to the darkest night.”
“The decision to invest was therefore easy,” Fay stated, “especially as I could sense that the director and producer Natalia de La Vega had a very strong mutually supportive relationship which makes them an effective and well organised core team who are refreshingly receptive to feedback.”
De la Vega of Argentine’s Navega Cine, who produces with Bovino, stated acquiring the assist from Fay – now a guide producer on the undertaking, was essential for image lock. “We are extremely proud of this film. We believe in Argentinian cinema, although it’s been very tough financially and emotionally to make it,” De la Vega advised Selection.
“The entire audiovisual industry in Argentina and its ecosystem are being dismantled by the current government, which is why we need foreign investors to chip in,” she added. “Any extra support will be more than welcome,” stated the producer, keen to satisfy potential distributors, gross sales brokers and competition programmers at ECAM Discussion board.
