In the near future, during an endless summer break and with a solar eclipse approaching, 12-year-old girl Bego struggles to find her place within her family and among girls her age. You can already feel that The Days Off (Los días libres), Argentine filmmaker Lucila Mariani’s first feature, touches on female identity and coming-of-age themes.
But there is also a technology and virtual worlds aspect that comes into play. Just read this part of a synopsis: “As the moon ‘eclipses’ animals and people around her, Bego meets REN__, an online friend, and through her discovers ‘shifting, a practice in which teenagers believe they can access other realities through lucid dreaming.”
The Days Off, which will world premiere on Aug. 7 in the Filmmakers of the Present Competition lineup of the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, is a co-production between Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and France.
The cast of The Days Off features Antonia Robolini, Luiza Quinteiro, Laura Paredes and Guillermo Berthold. Written and directed by Mariani, the movie features cinematography by Victoria Pereda and editing by Maximiliano Passarelli. Inwave Films is handling international sales.
“Los días libres explores themes that I have been drawn to throughout my career, such as horror, female identity, our relationship with technology and the virtual world and the limits of cinematic language,” Mariani highlights in a director’s statement. “This film is very personal to me. The internet was deeply formative in my life: it was where I met friends when I couldn’t find them in the real world, where I pirated music and films that otherwise would never have been within my reach in my country. It was also a refuge where I began to understand who I was and who I wanted to be. In many ways, the internet taught me how to dream.”
Concludes the writer-director: “This film is an open love letter to that internet – the one that no longer quite exists, the one that is changing. To its hidden corners that not everyone can see. A wink, a secret, to those who, like me, do not always belong. A refuge for those who don’t quite fit in and who, like me, needed cinema, the internet, something to hold on to and believe in.”
