Films: Gigante

Gigante

Uruguay, 2009, 84 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Drama, Foreign, Romance
Program: Contemporary World Cinema
Language: Spanish English Subtitles

DIRECTOR: Adrián Biniez
Producer: Fernando Epstein (exec), Agustina Chiarino (exec), Natacha Cervi, Christoph Friedel
Editor: Fernando Epstein
Screenwriter: Adrián Biniez
Cinematographer: Arauco Hernández Holz
Principal Cast: Horacio Camandule, Leonor Svarcas, Fernando Alonso, Diego Artucio, Ariel Caldarelli, Fabiana Charlo, Andrés Gallo, Federico Garcia, Néstor Guzzini, Esteban Lago, Ernesto Liotti, Carlos Lissardy, Nacho Mendy, Augusto Peloso, Rafael Sosa Zeballos
US Distributor: Film Movement

MUST END Thursday, February 4

35mm presentation - The centerpiece of Uruguayan filmmaker Adrián Biniez’s quiet drama is your classic Everyman – trapped in a dead-end job and an oversized body, lonely but unable to define his own yearnings. Jara (Horacio Camandule) spends his nights as a security guard on the graveyard shift at a Montevideo supermarket in stoic silence – eating pastries, doing crossword puzzles, and watching the confines of his world go by on a bank of TV monitors.
Something stirs in Jara, though, when he catches sight of a cleaning woman (Leonor Svarcas) in the fluorescent glare of the empty supermarket floor. Too shy to speak, he begins following the woman after work, decoding her secrets while continuing to deny his own. Will the gentle giant ever summon the courage to approach her?
Set against the dreary background of economic recession and distinguished by Camandule’s heart-wrenching performance, this nearly silent one-way love story – which the director himself considers “a subversion of the classic … romantic comedy” – earned three awards at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, including the Silver Bear, and was nominated for a Golden Bear. Biniez, who is also an actor, wrote, directed, and composed the music for this impressive debut.

Official Film Website

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