BUSAN 2011 DIRECTORS
PABLO GIORGELLI The Argentinian director’s road movie Las Acacias, a World Cinema selection, sent him on a life-changing journey, he tells Chris Evans
Pablo Giorgelli’s feature debut Las Acacias was the surprise winner of the prestigious Camera d’Or at Cannes this year, sparking interest in the tender road movie from distributors all over the world. But the journey to get there was a long and arduous one for the director. Six years in the making, Las
Acacias tells the story of weary truck-driver Ruben who takes on a nervous passenger named Jacinta and her five-month old baby as they travel from Asuncion in Paraguay to Argentina. The two gradually strike up a bond as they talk about each other’s difficult circumstances. The film’s sense of loss and
loneliness reflect the director’s own difficult circumstances at the time of him writing the script, alongside Salvador Roselli. “The idea for Las Acacias came at a time when I was looking after my sick father, the country was going through an economic crisis, which left me
without any work, and I got divorced after 10 years of marriage, all within a few months,” Giorgelli explains. The film-making process was no
easier. It took him years to find the two leads after casting several real truck drivers, before settling on the
actor German De Silva to play Ruben, and the casting director’s assistant, Hebe Duarte, to play Jacinta. There were also complications with
the weather, the young baby, road closures and the difficulty of filming in constant movement. But it all proved
cathartic for Giorgelli, as he went through a process of rediscovery. “I wanted to do a film about
loneliness, paternity, the difficulty of communicating with other people, and the possibility of rebirth. Ruben has a positive life transformation in the film, much like I did over the six years.” Giorgelli had previously made a number of short films at university, and even tried his hand at editing, including Ariel Rotter’s Just For Today and Gustavo Mosquera’s Moebius, but it was always his desire to direct features. Since Las Acacias won three
awards at Cannes, Giorgelli has taken the film to festivals all over the world, including Toronto, San Sebastian and now Busan, where it will feature in the World Cinema section. “I’m looking forward to Busan
where I want to crack the Asian market. It is a notoriously difficult territory to break into, especially for Latin American films,” says Giorgelli.
SONG IL-GON The opening film of this year’s BIFF is Always, the biggest picture to date from the Korean director, as he tells Jean Noh
Returning to the Busan International Film Festival 10 years after his debut feature Flower Island won the New Currents award, Korean director Song Il-gon proclaims himself honoured and a little nervous to have his new film, Always, selected as this year’s opening film. “The support and love my first feature
got at Busan gave me a lot of courage as a director,” he recalls. “The prizes and the audience responses came right before the film was released. It’s a great honour to be invited as the opening film now,” he says. Song’s film will also be the first to play
at the outdoor screen of the festival’s new Busan Cinema Center. “Everything will be on a tremendous
scale, and I’m curious myself how it will look,” he says. Song first made headlines when his
short The Picnic won the Cannes Jury Prize in 1999. He honed his poignant sensibilities and auteur style through his
n 14 Screen International October 2011
feature debut Flower Island which made its world premiere in Venice, directly before that year’s Busan, and subsequent works such as Spider Forest and The Magicians. Always is a step up in scale and budget
for Song. He received backing from major Korean investor/distributor Showbox and the film stars pan-Asian talent So Ji-sub (Rough Cut) as an ex-boxer who falls in love with a woman who is going blind. “It just happened that I’ve made low-
budget films, but I’ve always only made the films that I imagined,” Song explains. “Always is not that different from those. It just happens to have stars like So Ji-sub and Han Hyo-joo and a bigger budget. It’s in the same style, and should be touching and make you ponder about love. Every cut is as I wanted it. “The films I dream of making in the
future are also ones that will require a lot of budget and that I hope large audiences will come and enjoy watching.”
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