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Matías Piñeiro’s new, hour-long film, “You Burn Me,” is a dazzling, mind-bogglingly rich, intertextual hall of mirrors. Relying on Sea Foam, a chapter from Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò and Sappho’s poetry, it skitters off into a provocative meditation on the ellipsis in translation between the page and screen, as well as summoning the viewer’s sustained engagement. For all its preoccupations with death, this is a lively film, restlessly pushing against boundaries. It can be overwhelming and demands multiple revisits for you to fully appraise the massive scope of what Piñeiro is proposing.

The film recently had its US theatrical run via Cinema Guild. HighOnFilms’ Debanjan Dhar sat down with Piñeiro to discuss the art of detours, his abiding interest in variations, weaving incomplete narratives, resisting totemic representations, and more.

Debanjan: This film is full of offshoots, diversions, and detours, there’s this constant branching...

Following Hermia & Helena and Isabella, Matías Piñeiro’s new film You Burn Me playfully, gorgeously adapts “Sea Foam,” a chapter in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò. Centered around fictional dialogue between the ancient Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis, Piñeiro’s latest is a feat of effervescent poetic beauty, melding poignant words with stunning images to a dizzying, transcendent effect. With the Berlinale and NYFF selection picked up by Cinema Guild for a release beginning next week, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the first trailer.

You Burn Me will open on Friday, March 7 at New York’s Anthology Film Archives, accompanied by a special series curated by Matías himself, including works by Michelangelo Antonioni, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, Mariano Llinas, and more. For those in Los Angeles, don’t miss the LA premiere on March 15 at American Cinematheque as part of a series featuring films by the director.

Amongst the debut features populating Berlinale’s new section called Perspectives, none presented so admirably fresh take on fiction and political histories as Two Times João Liberada. The Portuguese hidden gem is directed by Paula Tomás Marques, who has made a few captivating shorts and also worked as a cinematographer on others’ films (including Matiás Piñeiro’s You Burn Me) as well as being an editor and script supervisor. Given her all-round involvement with independent production, it’s little surprise her full-length debut is a film about the making of a film. In the Lisbon-set João Liberada, an actress named João is cast to play a namesake of hers in a micro-budget period film.

Even if we spend all our screen time with João the actress, it’s João Liberada who is the film’s actual protagonist. With the twin name being a supposed coincidence, the (male) director of the...

On the heels of its premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, Hong Sang-soo’s “What Does That Nature Say to You” has found U.S. distribution with Cinema Guild.

The movie marks the prolific South Korean director’s 33rd movie and follows an impressive streak of six consecutive years at the Berlinale.

Cinema Guild, which recently collaborated with Hong on his previous film “A Traveler’s Needs,” will release “What Does That Nature Say to You” in theaters in the U.S. later this year. Produced by Jeonwonsa Film, the fim is represented internationally by Finecut.

“What Does That Nature Say to You” follows Donghwa (Ha Seongguk), a fledgling poet in his thirties who rejects material aspirations and seeks to lead a life dedicated to truth and beauty. On a lazy afternoon, he drives his girlfriend, Junhee (Kang Soyi), back to her parents’ home outside Seoul. In the driveway,...

You Burn Me.That we can be here…and still find things to call beautiful and to love or to be unable to stop loving is indefensible. But we are here, and we do. —Anahid Nersessian, Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s DiscourseOceanic waters are “drenched in sperm and tears” as “Sea Foam”—one of 27 pensive, playful texts in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leuco (1947)—begins. How boring, remarks Sappho to a nearby nymph. Both Britomartis and Sappho threw themselves into these salty, sticky waves out of desperation—to escape lecherous men, to obliterate a broken heart—and the poet, for her part, is disappointed. She longed after a sea that would swallow, that would annul. She longed for death. Swimming through the fluids of desire and despair forever was not at all what she had in mind. Cheer up, urges Britomartis. Becoming “a curl of frothing wave” is a fine fate.

New York-based Argentinian director Matiás Piñeiro’s work is without a doubt, a celebration of intertextuality. After continuously exploring the female roles in Shakespeare’s comedies from 2011’s Rosalinda up until 2020’s Isabella, he was drawn to a text which seemed impenetrable, admitting he had no clue how to film a poetic dialogue. In order to collect the shots for the adaptation-film-collage that would become You Burn Me, the filmmaker traveled between New York and San Sebastian, which gave him the possibility to “develop the material, watch it and think […]

The post A Film To Read: Matiás Piñeiro, Tomas Paula Marques and Gabi Saidón on You Burn Me first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

New York-based Argentinian director Matiás Piñeiro’s work is without a doubt, a celebration of intertextuality. After continuously exploring the female roles in Shakespeare’s comedies from 2011’s Rosalinda up until 2020’s Isabella, he was drawn to a text which seemed impenetrable, admitting he had no clue how to film a poetic dialogue. In order to collect the shots for the adaptation-film-collage that would become You Burn Me, the filmmaker traveled between New York and San Sebastian, which gave him the possibility to “develop the material, watch it and think […]

The post A Film To Read: Matiás Piñeiro, Tomas Paula Marques and Gabi Saidón on You Burn Me first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights for “You Burn Me” (aka “Tú me abrasas”), directed by Argentina’s Matías Piñeiro.

The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale in February in the festival’s Encounters section. It won a special mention from the jury at Paris’s Cinéma du réel in March.

Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its currently unspecified North American festival premiere later this year. The company has also acquired rights to three earlies films by Piñeiro – “The Stolen Man” from 2007; “They All Lie” from 2009; and “Rosalinda” which will be released on home video and digital alongside “You Burn Me.”

An adaptation of “Sea Foam,” a chapter in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, Piñeiro’s latest is an intimate and expansive meditation on death and desire. It is also a challenging exploration of the possibilities of adapting text to film.