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In “The Freshly Cut Grass,” there’s a scene that captures how people who’ve been married for a while, and are in the thick of raising children, can snipe at each other in dog-whistle ways that mean nothing and everything. Pablo (Joaquín Furriel), a professor at an agronomy college (he basically instructs his students about dirt), says that he thinks his teaching job is “shitty.” But his wife, Carla (Romina Peluffo), has no job at all (and is up for an interview), so she takes his comment as an insult. She snaps at him, then apologizes and lays her head on his shoulder; we think their snit is over. But Pablo doesn’t move a muscle, which leads her to say, “Does it bother you if I touch you?” No, he says, “how could it bother me?” Well, she explains, she wanted a hug. But there’s a power duel in play,...

Argentinian director Celina Murga’s new feature The Freshly Cut Grass (El aroma del pasto recién cortado) probably should have been called The Grass Is Greener, so much is it about adults desperately searching for happiness outside their married lives, only to realize they may have been better off staying home in bed and throwing on Netflix.

Following a pair of 40-something professors who teach at the same university, and who both start affairs with younger students that wind up blowing up in their faces, the film’s rather original structure tells two parallel stories that mirror each other without ever once intersecting. That novelty, as well as strong performances from a cast of six, help boost a movie that says nothing entirely new about adultery, marriage, or midlife crises, resulting in a relatively pedestrian if keenly observed ensemble drama.

Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, who held the same credit...

Celina Murga’s “The Freshly Cut Grass,” executive produced by Martin Scorsese, is debuting at the Tribeca Festival and Variety has been given exclusive access to its first trailer and poster ahead of its world premiere on June 8.

Penned by Murga, director Juan Villegas (“Las Vegas”) and Lucía Osorio with the collaboration of Gabriela Larralde, the plot centers around two couples who engage in extramarital affairs and how, despite having the same professional position, they are treated differently because of their gender.

An exploration of the sexism and misogyny that permeates relationships both at home and in the workplace, pic offers a timely look at feminism, sexism, and the subtle ways these issues affect both men and women, all through the microcosm of two marriages.

“I like it when films make us question ourselves instead of giving us simple answers. ‘The Freshly Cut Grass’ seeks to reflect about the complex...

Berlin-winning Argentine helmer Ariel Rotter debuts his latest feature “A Blue Bird” (“Un Pájaro Azul”) to Spanish audiences in Málaga this week, the film screening in a particularly robust out-of-competition 19 title lineup that include Benito Zembrano’s “Jumping the Fence” and Morena Films-backed “Puntos Suspensivos,” from David Marqués.

Produced by Argentina’s Tarea Fina, behind “Sublime” and Cannes Camera d’Or winner “Las Acacias,” alongside Uruguay’s Montelona Cine (“Nunchaku”), the film follows Javier (Alfonso Tort) and his partner Valeria (Julieta Zylberberg), as they navigate their exhausting six-year battle to conceive a child.

Scenes sit still, sometimes in silence between the pair as they embrace, breathe, sigh, indicative of the love poured into their struggle.

“In the years that my partner and I spent trying to become parents, we went through periods of great uncertainty that strengthened us and wore us down at the same time. The feeling of those years is reflected,...

Featuring famed directors such as Argentina’s Ariel Rotter and Spain’s Benito Zambrano, who have not only played but won at Berlin and San Sebastian respectively, Malaga’s 19-pic out of competition strand is a testament to the buyer-driven pulling power of Malaga , thanks to its significant market.

Multiple other name auteurs pack out the selection, which also includes a far stronger line is broad audience comedies than most festivals would risk.

This is certainly territory for discoveries and breakouts – a healthy Málaga tradition.

A brief drill down on titles:

“La Bandera”

Director: Martín Cuervo

“La Bandera,” produced by Álamo Producciones Audiovisuales and Idesia Films, humorously unfolds a family’s inheritance dispute, in the sense that sons, Aitor Luna and Miquel Fernández, aren’t getting what they expected from their father played by Spanish veteran actor Imanol Arias.

“A Blue Bird”

Director: Ariel Rotter

Respected Argentine auteur Rotter returns...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Writing of 1939’s James Cagney-George Raft big-house melodrama “Each Dawn I Die,” late film historian David Shipman said, “The title presumably referred to prison life, and suggested gloom and tragedy. But the way they played it, it was rather a thrill a second.”

There’s something of a similar disconnect to “A Twelve-Year Night,” Uruguay’s Oscar submission feature. Though decidedly non-pulp, this fact-based tale of three political agitators’ long solitary confinement under military dictatorship is given such bravura cinematic treatment that exciting technique almost overwhelms communicating the titular experience of grueling, punitive isolation. Nonetheless, it’s an impressive work that further confirms writer-director Alvaro Brechner as one of the leading South American screen talents to emerge in the last decade.

Seen as an active threat to recently installed military rule, particularly after it moved from nonviolent protest to kidnappings and assassinations, the Tupamaros Revolutionary Movement (or Mln-t) was vigorously...

Álvaro Brechner said the genesis of the idea to take on the true-life tale depicted in A Twelve-Year Night, which debuted this year at the Venice Film Festival, was not easy to discern. But he described the path to telling the story of courage, imagination and sheer will — the film is about three political prisoners in Uruguay who in 1973 are thrown into solitary confinement for more than 12 years, then survive to see the end of the brutal dictatorship and become, among them, Uruguay’s president, a minister of defense and a poet — as a journey.

“A director is like an explorer — you jump into the jungle and you know the north, but the north is always just a point, it’s not a place where you can arrive,” said Brechner, who with producer Mariela Besuievsky spoke onstage recently at the Awardsline Screening Series at The Landmark in Los Angeles. “For...

Antonio De La Torre, Alfonso Tort and Álvaro Brechner in Valencia Photo: Courtesy of La Mostra De Valencia

Some film critics hate screening Q&As - but there's nothing like attending one to get a sense of the real vibe of a festival. Sure, sometimes the questions can be non-questions ("I just love your movie!") or hoary old horrors but just as often, someone asks something oblique that a journalist might not think of and they give you a real sense of who is attending and how engaged they are.

In the case of the reborn and revitalised Mostra De Valencia in Spain, the answer to how engaged cinemagoers are is - very. I can't remember the last time I saw both a member of the audience and a member of the film's cast in tears at the Q&A of a fiction feature, but it happened at Sunday night's...

Uruguay has chosen Alvaro Brechner’s historic thriller A Twelve-Year Night as the country's submission for consideration in the foreign-language film Oscar category.

Starring Antonio de la Torre, Chino Darín (El Angel), Alfonso Tort and César Troncoso (Another Story of the World), the film tells the true story of three Tupamaro guerrilla members who were captured by the Uruguayan dictatorship in the early 1970s and thrown into solitary confinement for 12 years. The group included future president Jose "Pepe" Mujica.

A Twelve-Year Night premiered at the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival, where now former president ...

Uruguay has chosen Alvaro Brechner’s historic thriller A Twelve-Year Night as the country's submission for consideration in the foreign-language film Oscar category.

Starring Antonio de la Torre, Chino Darín (El Angel), Alfonso Tort and César Troncoso (Another Story of the World), the film tells the true story of three Tupamaro guerrilla members who were captured by the Uruguayan dictatorship in the early 1970s and thrown into solitary confinement for 12 years. The group included future president Jose "Pepe" Mujica.

A Twelve-Year Night premiered at the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival, where now former president ...