LOST EMBRACE

Director: Daniel Burman
Cast: Daniel Hendler, Adriana Aizemberg, Jorge d'Elía,
Sergio Boris, Rosita Londner
Runtime: 100 minutes
Country: Argentina/France/Italy/Spain
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Rating: Not yet rated

"It's a film of unexpected, almost indescribable off-center charm that deepens as it goes on."

Kenneth Turan , Los Angeles Times

A cleverly crafted story of personal soul-searching set against the colourful backdrop of downtown Buenos Aires , LOST EMBRACE is Daniel Burman's (ALL STEWARDESSES GO TO HEAVEN, WAITING FOR THE MESSIAH) finest film to date. Part of Argentina 's growing wave of engaging new cinema, LOST EMBRACE was Argentina 's submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2004 Oscars. It won both the Jury Special Prize and Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival, as well as the award for Best Film at the 2004 Bangkok World Film Festival. Like many young Argentines, twenty-something Ariel (Daniel Hendler, QUEENS , WHISKY) is looking for success - and a European passport.

Of Jewish-Polish descent, Ariel never knew his father (Jorge d'Elía, THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA), who returned to Israel to fight in the Yom Kippur war and never returned. Ariel hopes genealogy - and his name-dropping of Copernicus and Polanski during his interview at the Polish consulate - is enough to allow him to emigrate. Through Ariel's eyes, Burman shows us the soon-to-be extinct old world of Buenos Aires , where noisy Italian radio retailers work alongside Jewish merchants next door to the secretive Korean couple who specialise in feng shui. Ariel works with his mom (Adriana Aizemberg) in the family lingerie shop and often slinks off for trysts with a beautiful older woman who runs a nearby Internet café. Often compared to Woody Allen and Nanni Moretti, Burman transforms his auto-biographical story into an entertaining tale that simultaneously reflects on the devastating economic and social aftermath in Argentina left by the Allianza party. Without excessive sentimentality or empty philosophizing, Burman reveals the precariousness of today's Argentina and its uncertain future with his ironic portrait of day-to-day life in Buenos Aires .

"This is a small movie about a small world, but its modesty is part of what makes it durable and satisfying."

A.O. Scott. The New York Times