Director: Pablo Trapero - Argentina, 2008
To open our Spring series, De Género a Género, we present Pablo Trapero's Leonera (Lion's Den), Argentina's chilling entry in the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It tells the tale of Julia (Martina Gusman), who wakes up in the aftermath of a bloody evening to find herself simultaneously convicted and pregnant without knowing either who killed one of her lovers or the identity of her unborn child's father. Trapero's sensitive camera follows her as she grows from unwilling and frightened to loving mother in the course of her sentence and the eventual trial that will decide her fate. Despite the potentially melodramatic situation and the links of women-in-prison scenarios to exploitation cinema, Trapero and Gusman represent Julia's titanic struggle to raise her child in the most hostile of environments (which appears to be the very negation of the innocence she so desperately tries to protect for her child and even within herself) without stridency or exaggeration, making Leonera a gripping, thought-provoking mediation on the many dilemmas of maternity and a rare cinematic study of motherhood behind bars.
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This semester the films will be presented on Fridays at 6:30pm at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium (except for Thursdays, February 4, February 18, and April 8). As usual, we will give a short introduction of the film and after the presentation you are welcome to stay for a discussion.
Spanish with English subtitles - Free and open to the public
Some films are adult in nature and may not be appropriate for young audience
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