Laura Citarella

Born in La Plata, Argentina, in 1981, Laura Citarella lives in Buenos Aires. In 2005, she joined El Pampero Cine alongside Mariano Llinás, Agustín Mendilaharzu and Alejo Moguillansky. This highly independent production company makes "collective films on a shoestring budget, working with the family of cinema"[1] on a cooperative basis. In each new movie -- some twenty (more or less) feature-length films to date -- the quartet has wagered on the inexhaustible revelatory power of fiction, often deployed in a form akin to games of investigation. Like her comrades at El Pampero Cine, Citarella is a multifaceted artist. She has directed/co-directed four feature films: Ostende (2011, screened at BAFICI and the Viennale), La Mujer de los Perros (with Verónica Llinás, 2015, selected for the IFFR), Las Poetas visitan a Juana Bignozzi (with Mercedes Halfón, 2019, screened at Dok Leipzig, amongst other venues), and Trenque Lauquen (2022) (shown in the Orrizonti section of the Venice Film Festival). She has also produced a score of films, including Mariano Llinás's monumental La Flor (2018). When necessary, she turns her hand to acting (she plays Carmen Zuna in Trenque Lauquen) and singing (her voice can be heard, for example, in the second episode of La Flor).

Citarella likes to describe herself as "a learning filmmaker." This can be understood to refer to a desire to make films in order to learn about the people and things she encounters, a sign of boundless curiosity. Indeed, in her creative process, the script is a guide, never a rule. "Undergoing Transformation" could well be the title that links her various films. Whilst the mysteries of existence lie at the heart of her work, as evidenced by the character Laura, an investigator, in Ostende and Trenque Lauquen (Laura Paredes), for her the experience of making a film is not about unravelling these mysteries so much as being immersed in them. It is in this way that a new, sensitive interpretation of the world can be constructed, by recognising that it is in a state of perpetual metamorphosis. Consequently, filming amounts to embracing that which constantly eludes us. Laura Citarella herself says that her approach to filmmaking is based on "not confining anything, so that everything is fluid."[2]

In this sense, one might initially think that her feature films focus on women who disappear. In Ostende, Laura abandons her holiday setting to embark on a solo investigation. In La Mujer de los Perros, the so-called "woman with the dogs" flourishes on the fringes of society and urban life, manifestly the only person aware that she exists. In Las Poetas visitan a Juana Bignozzi, an all-female film crew pieces together the traces left by the recently deceased Argentine poet. In Trenque Lauquen, Laura is initially portrayed through the eyes of the men searching for her, then her own perspective takes over as we retrace her final steps. In El Affaire Miu Miu (2024), Citarella's latest short film, the allure of the fashion show is replaced by a camouflage operation in the Pampas, where designer clothing allows her to blend into the landscape.

However, what Citarella's films constantly reveal -- but never seek to prove -- is that the notion of disappearance stems from a stifling social norm. For her female protagonists, her films instead create the possibility of finding themselves at last; in places where no one expected them to be and where they are completely at ease, both in terms of their inner voices and by coming together in a trans-temporal feminist constellation. Citarella thus constructs "rooms of one's own," often in the outdoors, with a striking sense of topophilia. She focuses on the materiality and temporality inherent in the locations she films. To date, the majority of her films have stemmed from a desire to bring fiction to life in the vast province of Buenos Aires. This region has long been overlooked by Argentine cinema because of its purportedly monotonous landscape, but Citarella regards it as "a cinematic treatise in its own right." As she comments, "There are no limits, and within this immensity you must find your own tricks, your own trees, your own windows in order to frame the image."[3] For her new project, Las Italianas, Citarella takes as her starting point "my [family] tree," creating a "studio about fiction and itspossibilities," between her ancestral Italy and contemporary Argentina. Continuará...

Claire Allouche

[1] Claire Allouche, "Entretien avec El Pampero Cine : la vie des pirates," *Répliques *no. 11, Autumn 2018, pp. 80--115.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Mirta Gariboldi and Andrea Inzerillo, "Entretien avec Laura Citarella,'' catalogue of the 13th edition of the SiciliaQueer International News Visions FilmFest, Palermo, 2023.