At last, what had been a promise stopped being a debt: the stars were the films. And the cinemas were crowded. People took part of this exceptional cinema marathon. As a perfect finale, there were the awards. And the emotions. The closing ceremony of the 24th edition of Mar del Plata International Film Festival left in the air the happiness of being one more year together with the world cinema.

The ceremony, held in Astor Piazzolla room of Auditorium Theatre, counted with the presence of the Festival’s President, José Antonio Martínez Suárez; INCAA’s President, Liliana Mazure; Genreal Pueyrredón County Mayor, Gustavo Pulti and the County’s Secretary of Culture, Carlos Rodríguez.

“Being the Festival’s President also means being the emerging head of a group of more than 80 anonym persons”, said José Antonio Martínez Suárez. With his sense of humor always at the top, he remarked the importance of the joint work to make this event and he thanked Mar del Plata’s Mayor and the Province, who “have risen to the antecedents”. After that, it was Luis Scalella’s turn, President of FIAPF, International Federation of Film Producers Association, who highlighted the transcendence of the Festival as one of the 13 Class-A ones in the world. “We have had an incredible number of people. This is a party”.

La Arena group contributed to the ceremony with a precise and consistent freshness, with their short choreographies, a mixture of dance and acrobatics, around the audiovisual imaginary.

And the prizes were many and much the emotion of the ones who received them. The thanks-giving speeches were full of support messages to the Festival, to Public Cinema Universities and also to the independent directors’ work, who fight for going on with their passion for making films.

Eight were the cinema days. 200 films. And a constant in each of the screenings: the audience recognition to and event of which they were, undoubtedly, a vital part.

Some people never leave. This quotes the trailer of Mariana Chenillo’s first work. And that is because in Nora’s Will, death only awakes in the ones who stay alive, the need of sorting out family bonds, love and also the hard task of tie reconciliation. 
Nora decides to kill herself, but her plan doesn’t end on death. She not only leaves all set up for her own funeral, but also arranges every detail to make her death be just the beginning.
Winner of Best Direction at the Moscow Festival, best screenplay at Skip City, Best First Work at Guanajuato and the Audience award at Morelia, Miami and Austin, this story, in a tone of black comedy, dazzles with  its deep look at human relationships and their eternal contradictions.

Mariana Chenillo says: “This darkly funny film brandishes a subtle but nevertheless sharp sense of humor that stems from the contrasts between the characters and the situations they find themselves in —the atheist José in the religious ritual for the burial, for example, or the servant’s deeply rooted catholic beliefs and the strict rules imposed by Rabbi Jacowitz. The story takes place in a context full of collisions and contradictions which ignite one another and drive the plot to an unexpected resolution: the only character who has been able to fulfill all her objectives is dead from the film’s opening, and the one who hates with all his might ends by loving with even greater intensity”.

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