Sofía (Magdyel Ugaz) and Martina (Ximena Palomino) love each other and hope to become mothers, but the process is proving difficult. is the synopsis of “Curbs”from the Peruvian-Argentine director Gianfranco Quattriniwhich hits theaters this Thursday, May 26.
How difficult or enriching has it been to write, direct and produce?
It has been a process that has involved a lot of work of a diverse nature and a lot of dedication. The road has been long, we began to devise the project in 2016, together with Mariana Silva, an extraordinary Peruvian playwright and screenwriter. We face the beautiful challenge of telling this story of imperfect and contradictory characters, who follow their vital impulses and bet on love and family.
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He has said that the film seeks to open a conversation about the fact that there is no one way to love.
The great challenge has been to make a comedy open to family audiences, which makes visible a sensitive issue in a country where there are too many prejudices. I am very demanding of myself and my goal was to tell this story with reference to the great masters of comedy, such as Billy Wilder (“Bachelor Department”) and Pietro Germi (“Seduced and Abandoned”), to name a couple. They are filmmakers who, through popular comedies, have tackled taboo subjects, fostering relevant conversations in society.
One of the characters blurts out the phrase “here the law discriminates against them”. How do you expect the film to be received by the LGBT community?
I don’t belong to the spaces of activism and it’s not a militant film, because I don’t have that experience. But it is a fact that Peru is far behind in terms of the rights of diverse families compared to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, to look at neighboring countries. I am a straight white male and I have dedicated seven years of my life to giving birth to this film, because it seemed like a story worth telling. The way we filmmakers have to approach the issues is by telling stories, and this is just one of many, it is not intended to be a reference. The reality is that we are all learning, It is a time of many changes and if the film helps to generate a conversation about diversity in the family and in love, it is a point in its favor.
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Cusco is an ideal destination for any filmmaker. In your case, why did he choose it as a location?
Cusco, with an ancient culture and the mysterious forces of the apus, is, at the same time, the most cosmopolitan place in Peru. There you can meet people from different parts of the world who have arrived in search of healing, in contact with the spirits there. The Argentine main character arrives in Cusco to heal a love wound and make a change in his life, he is unaware of the dimension of the change that he is about to face. That is why we chose Cusco, since narratively it was the most powerful. But it is not easy to film in Cusco, and it involved a very big challenge for the entire technical team due to the height and the distances. Before filming began, knowing where we were going, we held a ceremony with the shaman Marcela Pantigozo, to request permission from the apus. It was a beautiful experience under a fine drizzle, in which we were grateful for the opportunity to start telling this story.
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