Inwave Films, the international sales company with offices in Paris and Beijing, has acquired worldwide sales rights to “The Days Off,” the debut feature from Argentine writer-director Lucila Mariani, ahead of its world premiere in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present.
Blending coming-of-age drama with a dreamlike, science-fiction edge, the film filters Argentina’s economic instability and the pull of the digital world through the perspective of a child searching for an escape.
Set during the first days of summer, as inflation rises, power cuts intensify and a solar eclipse approaches, the film follows Bego, 12, left to occupy herself while her family contends with the country’s deteriorating economy.
Using her mother’s phone, Bego connects with a virtual friend, REN__, who introduces her to shifting, a real online practice through which teenagers use lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis to try to reach a desired reality. As people around her begin slipping into an emotionally numb trance described as being eclipsed, the boundaries between Bego’s imagination, the digital world and physical reality begin to dissolve.
‘The Days Off’ Courtesy: Maravillacine
