Rancho
PerSo Award
By Pedro Speroni
Argentina, 2021, 72’
Friday 8th october PostModernissimo – 17.30
Sunday 10th october PostModernissimo – Sala Visconti – 15.00 (replica)
Producer: Ignacio Sarchi, Pedro Speroni
Director: Pedro Speroni
Executive Producer: Ignacio Sarchi, Pedro Speroni
Director of photography and camera: Pedro Speroni, Santiago Troccoli
Editor: Miguel Colombo
Sound director: Jorge Gutiérrez Jiménez
Color: Santiago Troccoli
Production manager: Martín Busel Javier Conrado Rodríguez
Sound recording: Manuel Schifani, Ezequiel Gómez Vara,Mauro Nahuel Amarilla
SYNOPSIS
Through an empathic record and a precise montage, “Rancho” becomes an invisible observer within an Argentine maximum security prison, giving testimony of gestures, frictions and unique moments that help building a choral story of characters, not only united by the prison, but also by the violence and the marginality in which they grew up.
PRODUCTION COMPANY
188 is Ignacio Sarchi’s production company. He produced Luis Ortega’s Dromómanos in 2013, Best Director Award at the Buenos Aires Film Festival, official selection of Havana and premiered at the Malba Museum and at the Center Pompidou in Paris. In 2014 he produced the feature film Lulú, also by Luis Ortega, winner of the BAL Goes to Cannes Development Award, official selection at Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Roma (Cinema d’Oggi), Hambugo, Estocolmo and BAFICI, among other film festivals. In 2019 he produced “El cuidado de los otros” by Mariano González, which had its world premiere at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
When I was 10, everything seemed fine. My maternal grandfather was ambassador to the Vatican, three of my mother’s brothers ran a very important bank, my father was a partner in a law firm. By the end of that year the family decay began though, looking back, maybe everything had fallen apart already. First my uncles were
arrested for committing fraud, one of them ran away. My grandfather left the Holy See. My father had to leave the law firm. What I had shaped as my family identity was no longer there. Family problems, problems between my parents, my maternal surname printed in all papers next to “fraud”. One day my uncle, a fugitive from justice, appeared in my house. It was night. We shared the bedroom for over a month. Until one day he
had to flee. A few days later he was arrested again. I remember going to visit him several times at the prison. My mother would take me, we would meet in the visiting room. I remember the search and the various corridors we had to go through to get to where he was. Many of those scenes are forever etched
in my memory. Years later, the chance to re-enter a prison came up. And the feelings I had experienced visiting my uncle reappeared, but this time they were much more powerful. I started going to prison almost every day. The bond between me and the prisoners grew strong and intimate. And almost unwittingly, this documentary film took shape.
BIOGRAPHY AND FILMOGRAPHY
Pedro Speroni is a scriptwriter and film director. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1987. He studied Image and Sound Design at University of Buenos Aires. He was a juror at the ICARO international film festival in Guatemala. In 2015 he made his first short film Peregrinación, premiered at 2015 BAFICI. Rancho, his first feature film, was selected at Berlinale Talents and Ventana Sur: showcase, among others.
His project Bilbao, currently in progress, won the INCAA’s Incubator for the Development of Documentary Projects Award. It also participated in several works in progress, being one of the most remarkable ones at the Encuentro Iberoamericano de Cineastas Emergentes (Ibero-American Meeting of Emerging Filmmakers), with support of Ibermedia and IDFA WIP showcase.