Hermia & Helena
Description
Foreknowledge of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is by no means required to enjoy Argentine writer-director Matías Piñeiro’s quasi-adaptation, in which a young theater director comes to New York from Buenos Aires on a fellowship to translate Shakespeare’s play into Spanish—and discovers its relation to her life. Agustina Muñoz stars as a young theater director who departs Buenos Aires for a fellowship residency in New York, ostensibly to translate the play into Spanish. Complications gently ensue, with game turns from a companionable cast full of indie-film notables including Keith Poulson, Mati Diop, Dustin Guy Defa, and Dan Sallitt. Piñeiro and cinematographer Fernando Lockett have a gracious and easygoing way of following people around, favoring human gestures even amidst periodic flourishes of formal experimentation. It all has a decidedly Bard-like aspect of deeply engaged creative playfulness, though the filmmaker’s voice is fully his own. It’s also a neat trick that this low-key tale of lostness in translation becomes a resonant affirmation of cultural commonality. Piñeiro handles heady stuff with a wonderfully light touch, and the film casts a lasting spell with its genuine intimacy, ephemeral beauty, and unpretentious vitality. –Jonathan Kiefer
Matías Piñeiro was born in Argentina in 1982, and studied at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. Following a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard in 2011, Piñeiro completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at NYU. After Rosalinda (2011), Viola (2012), and The Princess of France (2014), Hermia & Helena is his fourth consecutive film inspired by Shakespeare, and his first predominantly in English. Piñeiro currently divides his time between New York and Buenos Aires.
Trailer
//player.vimeo.com/video/207678783?autoplay=1Film Details
Language English/Spanish
Year 2016
Runtime 86
Country USA/Argentina
Director Matías Piñeiro
Producer Graham Swon, Melanie Schapiro, Andrew Adair, Jake Perlin
Writer Matías Piñeiro
Editor Sebastián Schjaer
Cinematographer Fernando Lockett
Cast Agustina Muñoz, Maria Villar, Mati Diop