EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF
A film by Mo Scarpelli
Venezuela, UK, Italy, United States
105 min. 2020

51º Visions du Réel
International Competition
Special Mention for Best Film

DIRECTOR AND CAMERA
Mo Scarpelli

WITH
Jorge Roque Thielen H.
Jorge Thielen Armand

EDITOR
Juan Soto

SOUND DESIGN
Roberta Ainstein

PRODUCERS
Manon Ardisson
Rodrigo Michelangeli

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Edward Power
Gordon Annie
Justin Madhany

ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS
Zane Dawood
Phoebe Hall
Joe Torres

PRODUCTION COMPANIES
Ardimages UK
La Faena
Rake Films
Channel 6 Media
Tres

WITH THE SUPPORT OF
Torino Film Lab Audience Design Fund
FeverFilm Amsterdam
Oregon Arts Council

Although Jorge left Venezuela as a child, his father remained there. With time and at a distance, the son, now a filmmaker, devised a film to seize certain features of the history of his genitor, with a troubled past, in the illegal goldmines of the Amazonian jungle. So Jorge comes back to a country he struggles to recognize to shoot a fictional film (La Fortaleza) in which his father Roque will necessarily have the starring role: his own. Capturing the intricacies of a hopeless relationship, a certain perversity of the filming process as well as the ambivalence of father-son/fantasized father-demiurge son relations, Mo Scarpelli resolutely and sensitively draws a portrait of a shifting power balance, of an intimacy that starts to emerge, not without difficulty, and then sees itself drowned in alcohol when the first bottle of rum appears. Or how film sometimes succeeds—or is sometimes doomed to fail—in giving form to human beings and the love that inhabits them. — Emilie Bujès, Artistic director of Visions du Réel

SYNOPSIS
A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the Amazon jungle. He casts Father to play himself. What starts as an act of love and ambition spirals into a process which confronts Father’s struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son.

DIRECTOR'S NOTE
The intention of my films is to linger, to study faces and reactions, and ultimately, to allow people to betray their own or others’ versions of themselves. Every man is a contradiction; some of us are ready to see, and ask why. Father is this way. EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF is the process of watching a father be seen, finally, by his son, and in a totally different way be seen by me; his daughter-in-law, a woman, his friend. I leave much to be interpreted in what is “right” or “wrong” about this particular process of representation. What I do hope to impart is my solidarity with the human being, a camera’s validity of their fear of the world and their place within it. The root of all shades of machismo is fear. The root of family is love. EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF is this fear and love colliding.

PRESS
> Riveting…A tantalizing house of mirrors. Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter
> Provocative…A richly textured experience. Jonathan Romney, Screen International
> A deeply human portrayal. Emiliano Granada, Variety
> One complicated multilayered journey, both logistically and emotionally. Lauren Wissot, Filmmaker Magazine
> There’s a lyricism and poetry to the filmmaking, allowing for viewers to become completely immersed into Scarpelli’s rumination on filmmaking, family and loss... Sincerely one of the best films of 2020. Joshua Brunsting, CriterionCast
> A fascinating study of the extent to which filmic truth can be pushed. UK Film Review
> An utterly compelling insight into the dynamics of a father and son relationship as well as masculine perfomativity. Oana Tenter, Dispatch Feminist Moving Image
> A hopeful message about the limits of art, self-censorship and the possibilities for cinema to remain the absolute protagonist of our lives. Rolando Gallego, EscribiendoCine


SCREENINGS (selection)
51st Visions du Réel International Competition. Switzerland
33rd IDFA Best of Festivals Section. Netherlands
60th Krakow International Film Festival. Poland
42nd Cairo International Film Festival. Egypt
29th Biarritz Festival Amérique-Latine. France
21st Maryland International Film Festival. USA
26th Cucalorus Film Festival. Opening Film. USA
10th DOC NYC. USA
15th SANFIC. Chile
8th Transcinema Festival Internacional de Cine. Perú
19th DokuFest International Documentary Film Festival. Kosovo
17th Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival. Armenia

AWARDS
Special Mention. 51st Visions du Réel International Competition. Switzerland
Silver Biznaga - Best Director. 25th Málaga International Film Festival. Spain
Best Art Documentary. 37th Bogota International Film Festival. Colombia
Best Cinematography. 17th Festival of Venezuelan Cinema. Venezuela
Special Mention. PerSo International Film Festival. Italy
Nominated for the Doc Alliance Award 2020. EU

Stills and press materials download >

www.elfatherplayshimself.com