Official Selection 2022: Focus – Kiro Russo, Opening Night Film and Closing Night Film

This year’s Focus section presents a promising filmography still largely unknown to Brazilian audiences: the work of Bolivian filmmaker Kiro Russo. A prominent representative of contemporary Bolivian cinema, Russo was born in La Paz in 1984 and has thus far produced and directed 2 feature films and 4 short films, screened at several international festivals. Through this small set of films, albeit exceptionally consistent, Russo has developed a style that is attentive to urban and rural movements in Bolivia, blending Indigenous cosmology with the country’s accelerated urbanization process. His work traverses the boundaries between documentary and fiction with striking precision, mastery, and formal rigor, marked by creative partnerships with communities and filmed subjects. This year’s Olhar de Cinema dedicates the three programs of the Focus Section to the filmmaker, underlining the short films Enterprisse (2011), Juku (2012), The beast (2015) and New life (2015), directed by Russo, as well as Despedida (2015), directed by Pablo Paniagua, who has worked as a cinematographer in all of the director’s films. The director’s two feature films complete the program: the acclaimed Dark Skull (2016) and The Great Movement (2021), winner of the Special Jury Prize in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Biennale (2021), set to premiere in Brazil at the 11th Olhar de Cinema IFF.

FOCUS – KIRO RUSSO

Feature films

THE GREAT MOVEMENT
/ EL GRAN MOVIMIENTO
Kiro Russo | Bolivia, France, 2021, 85’

DARK SKULL
/ VIEJO CALAVERA
Kiro Russo | Bolivia, 2016, 79’

Short films

ENTERPRISSE
/ ENTERPRISSE
Kiro Russo | Argentina, 2010, 8’

JUKU
/ JUKU
Kiro Russo | Bolivia, Argentina, 2011, 18’

THE BEAST
/ LA BESTIA
Kiro Russo | Argentina, 2015, 12’

NEW LIFE
/ NUEVA VIDA
Kiro Russo | Bolivia, Argentina, 2015, 15’

DESPEDIDA
/ DESPEDIDA
Pablo Paniagua | Bolivia, 2015, 6’

Besides, once again, the opening and closing sessions champion contemporary national works. The opening film is Swing and Sway, directed by Chica Barbosa and Fernanda Pessoa, in which two friends, one in Brazil and the other in the United States, exchange filmic letters during the first year of the pandemic. The feature film Everybody’s Gone to Mars , by director Telmo Carvalho, closes the 11th edition of Olhar de Cinema, proposing not only an animated journey through personal feelings and experiences with the pandemic, but imagining and dreaming other world possibilities in a flow of colors, shapes, and desires.

OPENING NIGHT FILM

SWING AND SWAY
/ VAI E VEM
Chica Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa | Brazil, 2022, 82’

CLOSING NIGHT FILM

EVERYBODY’S GONE TO MARS
/ TODO MUNDO JÁ FOI PRA MARTE
Telmo Carvalho | Brazil, 2022, 75’