AN HONEST LOOK

UNA MIRADA HONESTA

By Roberto PERSANO, Santiago NACIF

ESTUDIO SIGIL - as PROD

Documentary - Completed 2022

Renowned Argentine photojournalist Eduardo Longoni, who captured decisive moments in his country’s history, faces a crisis that distances him from the streets and leads him to seek new professional challenges.

Festivals
& Awards

Ventana Sur 2019
Incubadora INCAA. Mejor proyecto documental
FICCI Cartagena 2020
Puerto Ficci - Desarrollo
    • Year of production
    • 2022
    • Genres
    • Documentary, Historical, Biography
    • Countries
    • ARGENTINA, COLOMBIA
    • Languages
    • SPANISH-ARGENTINE, ENGLISH
    • Budget
    • 0 - 0.3 M$
    • Duration
    • 85 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Roberto PERSANO, Santiago NACIF
    • Writer(s)
    • Monica SIMONCINI
    • Producer(s)
    • Juan Andres MARTINEZ CANTO (Paimun Cine), Omar NERI (MASCAROCINE), Diana RAMOS (JANUS FILMS)
    • Synopsis
    • While covering a demonstration against pension reform, photojournalist Eduardo Longoni decides to retire from street photography when he finds that at age 60 he can no longer physically outrun the police and security forces. He undertakes a project to create a retrospective of his career, covering four decades of Argentine history through his most well-known and emblematic photos: the first photo of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo to make its way around the world, the mythical image of Diego Maradona’s goal against the British in the 1986 World Cup, and the photo of dictator Rafael Videla praying in a church, among others. His objective is to create different types of encounters between his works and the public. To achieve this, he designs a series of projects and street interventions in symbolic spaces in the city of Buenos Aires, such as the Obelisk and Plaza de Mayo, using gigantic projections, mapping techniques, LED screens and panels, and other resources in spaces where a high number of people circulate. Several days a week, Longoni visits his mother, Elsa. At 95, she is showing early signs of memory loss. During one of these visits, he discovers a box containing 300 slides from his childhood, along with his notebooks from primary school. This encounter with his origins redefines his career and presents him with a new professional challenge.
      In the solitude of his apartment, Longoni experiments with superimposing the slides onto the drawings in his school notebooks. That’s when he begins to find a synthesis, a narrative that emerges from this juxtaposition of two moments in his childhood. He calls it “Projected Childhood”. His retirement from street photography, the increasingly close relationship with his mother and the growing distance between him and his only daughter, who decides to travel abroad to find work, place Longoni at a delicate emotional crossroads. Filled with mixed emotions, he works on the presentation of his retrospective and his new project. In search of clarity, he travels to his birth city, Mar del Plata. He revisits significant locations from his childhood, his neighbourhood, the port, the schools he attended, the beaches, the cliffs. And decides that there he will display the last public projection of his photos, printing his images on the turbulent ocean’s surface. The night of the installation, with the sound of the wind and the waves crashing against the rocks in the background, he alternates brief interventions with projected photos, watching the eyes of his public shining in the dark. The encounter combines intimacy, celebration and the ancient ritual of words and images projected onto a backdrop that represents vastness itself, the sea.