Celebrity Biographies
Pablo Trapero
On the threshold of the third millennium, Argentine cinema has carved a niche for itself on the international scene. It has been thanks to the talent of filmmakers like Pablo Trapero, with his own style and stories of social denunciation.
Pablo Trapero was born in San Justo, La Matanza, in the province of Buenos Aires in Argentina, on October 4, 1971. He studied cinema at the university, and after shooting several shorts, he stood out with his first feature film, from 1999, Mundo grúa , presented in Venice. It is a time when the cinema of his country began to cross borders thanks to the work of directors such as Fabián Bielinsky ( Nine Queens ) and Juan José Campanella ( El hijo de la novia ), which allowed promising filmmakers to debut.
Cannes pays attention to Trapero in 2002, when he selects El bonaerense for its prestigious section “Un certain regard”. The film surprises, since it portrays police corruption through a thief who is an expert in picking locks, since by putting his talent at the service of law enforcement he discovers a world much worse than the one he came from. The good reception leads Trapero to create his own production company in Buenos Aires, Matanza Cine, with which, in addition to carrying out his next films, establishing contacts with interesting partners on the international scene, he supports other Ibero-American directors. His wife and muse Martina Grusman will be a partner of the company. Trapero has produced feature films and documentaries such as Ciudad de María , by Enrique Bellande, or La mecha, by Raúl Perrone.
Despite the reception given to El bonaerense , his following works, Familia rodante (2004) -which follows a family that travels in a caravan for a wedding- and Nacido y brado (2006) -about the difficulties of coping with the aftermath of an accident – do not attract much attention. However, the second title allows Trapero to work with what will be his wife, Martina Gusman , with whom he currently has a son. Gusman will be in all of his films from then on.
In 2008, he took a giant step in Cannes, getting Leonera selected for the official section. The film follows its usual guidelines of grimy and gritty realism, almost documentary, when describing the tribulations of a pregnant woman -Martina Gusman- sentenced to prison.
Trapero’s most popular film is probably Carancho (2010). He recruited the most popular Argentinian actor, Ricardo Darín , for himself, and devised a plot of “vulture” lawyers on the lookout for accidents that would allow them to claim compensation. Once again, the filmmaker addresses the issue of corruption, and although his gaze remains calm and leaden, he connects better with the general public. It’s the same thing that happens with Elefante blanco (2012), again with Darín, who follows the work and setbacks faced by two compromised priests in a miserable neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Both this film and the collective 7 days in Havana, where Trapero signs one of the segments, were chosen for sections of Cannes, which gives an idea of the filmmaker’s predicament in the current Seventh Art scene.