Naishtat's 'Glaxo' Premieres at Toronto, San Sebastián — SkimNews
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- "Glaxo" world premieres at Toronto's Special Presentations before competing in San Sebastián main competition, marking Benjamín Naishtat's return to the darker collective-psychology territory of "Rojo" after co-directing the lighter "Puán."
- The film unfolds across three timelines — June 6, 1956 outside Buenos Aires; one year later in the town of Chivilcoy; and 1984 — opening with a prologue based on Roberto Walsh's "Operation Masacre," in which Police Commissioner Folcada arrests 12 men listening to a boxing match on orders to make an example of them.
- "Glaxo" was shot entirely in Brazil by Rodrigo Teixeira's RT Features with Argentina's Rei Pictures as minority co-producer, because Naishtat said cuts and freezing of Argentine public film funding made shooting at home "impossible."
- Naishtat called Argentina's current government "fascist" and "an enemy of culture" with "no cultural politics whatsoever," warning that fewer productions, reduced festival presence, and "the total lack of promoting new talent" will become "even more evident in the coming years."
- The screenplay is co-written by Hernán Ronsino, whose novel "Glaxo" inspired the film and was itself partly inspired by Walsh's "Operation Masacre," which also inspired the 1973 underground film of the same name by Jorge Cedrón.
- "Glaxo" employs three distinct visual languages: a Super 16mm-style prologue evoking clandestine Latin American cinema of the 1970s, a 1950s melodrama section referencing films like "A Place in the Sun" and "Giant," and a CinemaScope film-noir section set in the 1980s.
Why it matters: Naishtat shot 'Glaxo' entirely in Brazil with Brazilian financing because Argentina's cuts and freezing of public film funding made shooting at home 'impossible,' a direct consequence of the country's funding collapse. His public description of the government as 'fascist' and 'an enemy of culture' gives the San Sebastián competition title an unusually pointed political charge.
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