La Paz

Opening Night! North American Premiere! Filmmaker in person for Q&A!

La Paz is the story of Liso, a young man who emerges from a psychiatric institution and tries to re-adapt to daily life in the universe of his middle class family and neighborhood. Though everything seems difficult, under the surface and very subtly things start to change for him.  Quietly and slowly, Loza draws us into Liso's inner plight as he connects again with the outside world and searches for a new balance, a kind of inner peace, while exposing what have become, for him, the limiting rituals of a comfortable middle class life.

Also an influential playwright in the nascent indie theater scene of Buenos Aires, Loza is a prolific filmmaker whose films (showcased in Latinbeat since 2000) have remained faithful to a very personal kind of aesthetic/search. He was one of the very first of the so -called “New Argentine Cinema” filmmakers, with a career as discreet and quietly loaded as his films. His films are a space for challenging and uncommon aesthetic exploration—in how to convey emotions visually, using silence as pulse of the story. The result is clear and poignant storytelling devoid of any excess in performance or staging, in which his affection and deep understanding of his characters reach out to the spectator.

To quote Marcelo Panozzo, program director of this year’s BAFICI: “La Paz’s tone is its true triumph: it’s something related to patience, a rare feature in both cinema and life”.