Overview

A portrait of several young women at the threshold of adulthood, feeling their way through various crises born of the insular comforts of class privilege.

• Review

  Though Kekszakallu was inspired by the opera by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, it is difficult to extrapolate the relevance between the two. Everything seems ordinary. Children diving, boys polishing surfboards and nameless lovers chatting on the grass. The audiences are finally aware of the characters when they re-emerge. Nothing seems special, but there are a few elements that are eye-catching. The young girls are on the threshold of entering adulthood. They are suffering at the factory, at home and at school. Their way of being mentally incompetent matches the wearisome summer. Kekszakallu expresses the state of the amorphous soul through the liberating playful image, color, sound and delicate composition. This is the first feature film directed by Argentine director Gaston Solnicki, the documentarian. [JANG Byungwon]

• Credit

  Director	Gaston SOLNICKI
  Producer	Ivan EIBUSZYC, Gaston SOLNICKI
  Cinematography	Diego POLERI, Fernando LOCKETT
  Editor	Alan SEGAL, Francisco D?EUFEMIA
  Music	Bela BARTOK
  Sound	Jason CANDLER
  Cast	Laila MALTZ, Katia SZECHTMAN, Pedro TROCCA

Director

Gastón SOLNICKI

Gaston Solnicki began directing documentaries then proceeded to narrative films, and eventually merged the two. Solnicki conveys his narrative through elements such as a woman’s face, a building’s form, and the vitality of a season. His feature documentary, <i>Papirosen</i> (2011), unfolds his four-generation family history as a middle-class Jewish family in Argentina. This film highlights the relations between an individual’s life and history by stirring documentary-style distancing with personal confessions. His first feature narrative film, <i>Kekszakallu</i> (2016), portrays the mundane lives of impotent youth. <i>Introduzione all´Oscuro</i>, invited to this year’s Jeonju IFF, is dedicated to Hans Hurch of the Vienna International Film Festival who passed away two years ago. The film approaches human nature through the traces of place and landscape.