El Planeta (2021)
Director: Amalia Ulman Run Time: 79 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2021
Starring: Ale Ulman, Amalia Ulman, Nacho Vigalondo, Saoirse Bertram, Zhou Chen
Country: United States, Spain
Language: English, Spanish
This film screened on January 30, 2021, as part of the Sundance Film Festival 2021 satellite screenings in Columbus, Ohio. Watch the Q&A replay with Director Amalia Ulman and Sudeep Sharma, Sundance Film Festival Programmer, here.
About the film:
Sundance 2021. Amidst the devastation of post-crisis Spain, mother and daughter bluff and grift to keep up the lifestyle they think they deserve, bonding over common tragedy and an impending eviction.
“a deadpan vein of black comedy somewhere on the very wide spectrum between Lena Dunham and early Pedro Almodóvar”
—Guy Lodge for Variety
About the filmmaker:
Amalia Ulman is an Argentinian-Spanish visual artist and filmmaker based in New York City. Her conceptual projects explore issues of class, gender and sexuality by blurring the lines between performance and reality. In 2014, she received critical acclaim for her intricately crafted social media project “Excellences and Perfections.” Her work has been featured at galleries and cultural institutions around the world.
In her feature directorial debut El Planeta, Ulman plays Leo and her real-life mother—Ale Ulman in her first acting role—plays Leo’s mother in an absurdist comedy based on the true story of mother-daughter grifters in Gijón, Spain, where Ulman grew up.
See the full SFF21 Columbus lineup