The treasures that filmmakers accumulate

For a long time, every Tuesday, I met with a group of director friends like Juan José Jusid, Marcelo Piñeyro, Alberto Lecchi, and a few others. Week after week, we would watch a classic film at the Argentine Film Directors (DAC) headquarters, then go eat pizza and talk about cinema, sometimes for hours. Between so many conversations, we began to notice something: there are films that can be told in a single sequence; they are scenes that function as the driving force or the heart of the story.

That idea always lingered in my head until one day I realized that every filmmaker treasures a scene they love, one that represents them. What would happen if I gathered a group of directors to choose and thoroughly analyze the most significant scene from their own filmographies?

That was the starting point for the documentary My Best Scene. We brought together ten very different filmmakers: Juan José Campanella, Albertina Carri, Miguel Cohan, Carmen Guarini, Alberto Lecchi, Néstor Montalbano, Lorena Muñoz, Juan Bautista Stagnaro, Demian Rugna, and Marcelo Piñeyro. Some are obsessive about neatness, others indulge in improvisation, some make fiction, others documentary, some make large, industrial films, others smaller ones.

I knew them all, and had worked with many of them before. I was an assistant to Lecchi, an assistant director to Piñeyro on several films, and Campanella and I shared the joke that I was his Peronist friend and he was my gorilla friend. They all agreed to participate in the film with great willingness and generosity.

I was very surprised by Demian Rugna talking about When Evil Lurks. I'm 69 years old, and horror films were never my thing. He talks about the technical and narrative construction of his sequence with admirable pride and clarity. Lorena Muñoz recounts how an incredibly complex sequence shot of Gilda, played by Natalia Oreiro, was made. Miguel Cohan, for example, analyzes the use of the close-up shot of a glass that a character finds under a piece of furniture and how that scene in The Same Blood transforms the entire story from there.

The ten scenes chosen are so well told by their directors that My Best Scene should be required reading in film schools. It covers staging, shots, editing, character development, and directing actors.

In this time of brutal crisis and defunding of Argentine cinema by its authorities, I believe this film clearly reflects the power, great diversity, and richness of our cinema.

My Best Scene premiered at the Cacodelphia Art Cinema, the Gaumont Cinema, the Avalon Room at the Itaca Theatre Complex, and in various theaters throughout the country.

*Film director and screenwriter.