"La uruguaya", an unusual film experiment that defies the rules

Argentine Sebastián Arzeno and Uruguayan Fiorella Bottaioli star in "La Uruguaya".

(Credit: photo courtesy of Esteban Madriaga)

(CNN Spanish) -

In the streets of Montevideo, the filming of "La uruguaya", a film based on the novel by the Argentine Pedro Mairal, is already underway.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary: a film that starts from a

and is filmed in the country that gives it its name.

However, seen up close, this movie is anything but normal.

"La uruguaya" tells the story of the Argentine Lucas Pereyra, a forty-year-old married writer, father of a son, who travels to Montevideo for the day to look for dollars and to skip the exchange restrictions imposed in his country, and incidentally meet Magalí Guerra, a young woman he met a long time ago and whom he has not stopped thinking about.

However, things in Montevideo are not going as he expected.

The writer and editor Hernán Casciari, founder of the magazine

who became a benchmark for Argentine letters and over time expanded his project and has a publishing house and an audio-visual area, bought the rights to "La Uruguaya ".

Neither funds nor subsidies nor

crowdfunding

And then Orsai launched the production of "La uruguaya" with a financing model that is at least unusual for the film industry: neither large capitalists nor funds nor subsidies nor

.

The filming of "La Uruguaya" on the beaches of Montevideo, where associated producers participated as extras in the filming of a party scene.

(Credit: courtesy of producer @atlantico_content)

Then how?

Orsai's team set the budget for the film at US $ 600,000 and opened a call in January for the public to finance it through the purchase in US $ 100 bonds. With the purchase, the investors become associate producers.

"Investors" is the key word: they are not donors, they are investors who, if the film generates a profit, will collect their share.

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"The method is the usual method: it is to ask capitalists for money to make cultural productions, with the difference that in this case our capitalist is the community. But he is a capitalist who wants something in return. And what he wants in return is dividends, like any associate producer of any audiovisual production ", explains Casciari to CNN en Español.

Producing partners came quickly from all over the world: Argentina, Uruguay, but also the United States, Israel, Germany and New Zealand, to name a few.

And the project was launched with the participation of its 1,937 associated producers through an application specially designed for the project.

Producers ask questions, give their opinions, make decisions and even act. They defined, for example, who would be the protagonists of the film, after seeing several couples who had been cast. They also defined that they wanted the film to go to commercial theaters (even when some members of the "hard core" of the project, including Casciari, were against it). Voting has strict rules, for example that there must be a 51% quorum for decisions to be binding.

And they have also held other roles: extras on the set, in charge of documenting the process, production assistants who unblock difficulties.

"It is quite unusual, funny because of the way they work and how it becomes a very strong productive muscle that 2,000 people are wanting something to happen. What ends up working is that muscle, that tremendous desire for it to happen," he says about it. Casciari.

"La uruguaya", more than an adaptation of Pedro Mairal's novel, is a response to Lucas Pereyra, its protagonist, explains Hernán Casciari.

(Credit: photo courtesy of Esteban Madriaga)

Through the application, associated producers can follow the process step by step.

For those who are not producers and want more details, there is a

by producer Gabo Grosvald that allows you to delve into this unique audiovisual experiment.

An anecdote that at this point is more than known sums up the spirit of collective work: when the bond sale process began, they did not have a bank account open in Uruguay to receive deposits.

An associate producer, unknown to the team, offered his account and even passed his bank password.

He came to have in his possession US $ 120,000 of the film.

It was Sebastián 'Papelito' Fernández, former player of the Uruguayan section, who participated in the mythical World Cup in South Africa in 2010 where the celestial was in fourth place.

Collective intelligence

Among trolls, disinformation and hate speech, to mention just three examples, we receive a lot of bombardment against the internet (through the internet itself). However, this project shows, for Casciari, the opposite: the potential for the development of collective intelligence. "What has happened with the Internet in the last 20 years is that we began to discover, very little by little at the beginning, that everything that was said in analogical times about the masses, who are stupid, on the Internet the opposite happens. The more people, the more intelligence. And it is amazing how this happens. This happens on Wikipedia, it happens in the communities of people who subtitle movies for free. The more they are, the more order, more control and more creativity, "he says,and ensures that in the development of "La uruguaya" happens "exactly the same."

He also highlights that "a lot of people are learning to make cinema as if it were a workshop, (but) much more entertaining and above all more real than any theoretical film workshop".

Esteban Madriarga, one of the associated producers of this "madness", as he describes it, agrees on this.

"I saw it as an opportunity to get to know what a movie is like inside," he tells CNN camera in hand, before a day of filming begins and with him his task of documenting in photos what is happening and sharing the good news. with its thousands of partners.

In addition to the story of Lucas Pereyra and Magalí Guerra, "La uruguaya" offers a unique view of the city of Montevideo.

(Credit: courtesy of producer @atlantico_content)

More than an adaptation, a response to "La uruguaya"

Since its publication in 2016, "La uruguaya" made its way and its success quickly transcended the Río de la Plata.

But why this novel precisely?

Casciari emphasizes that it is a "very generational" novel that reflects, on the one hand, the 40-year-old in crisis, and on the other, "an era of the pathologically stupid Argentine for the dollar and for preserving I don't know what, that middle-class thing that has the absurd porteño ".

However, Casciari claims that more of an adaptation in itself, the film is "almost a feminist response" to Lucas Pereyra, the novel's protagonist.

And this also has to do with the team, which is largely led by women.

It seems to me that there is a cinematographic answer to a literary uncertainty, he explains.

The long journey ahead

On December 28, a first public presentation of "La uruguaya" is scheduled for associated producers. But this will not be the premiere itself, explains Casciari, but "a kind of

" because the partners will define if that is the final cut or changes are introduced. For that, they will receive a series of questions about aspects that can be edited and on which they can decide.

After the final product is in, the team's goal is for the film to tour festivals and eventually be released in cinemas and

platforms

.

But that will not be the end of the journey.

The cycle will end with a series of exhibitions in large theaters in different countries in which the protagonists, the scriptwriters, the director and other members of the team participate.

"Canelones" is already underway

As the filming of “La uruguaya” progresses, the next Audiovisual Orsai project is already underway.

"Canelones", a miniseries of six chapters of half an hour each, will also be financed entirely by producer partners, who can already buy the bonds

.

Unlike "La uruguaya", there is no pre-established amount.

The vouchers are on sale until December 31 and, depending on the money that has been raised up to that moment, the parameters of the shooting will be established.

"Canelones" will tell a true story that happened to Casciari's mother in 2015 and takes place in Mercedes, Argentina, his hometown.

And it will be the second production that, as Casciari did with previous projects, leaves out intermediaries to build directly with the community.