Pasto Cine Boards ‘Puan’ Helmer María Alché’s ‘I Love You and Today Everything Looks Beautiful’ (EXCLUSIVE)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Argentina’s Pasto Cine has boarded María Alché’s upcoming “I Love You and Today Everything Looks Beautiful.” The film is produced by leading Brazilian banner Bubbles Project alongside Spain’s Elastica Films, Germany’s Pandora Film, and France’s Maneki Films.

“I Love You and Today Everything Looks Beautiful” is set between the 1950s and 1960s and trails the lives of Josefina and Jorge following the death of their parents. Orphaned, the children are taken in by their irreverent aunt Berta, and begin a new life in the big city in a house frequented by intellectuals and where all kinds of political conspiracies are hatched. In her director’s statement, Alché said the film is “based on the creation of a group of strong, complex and magnetic characters who survive thanks to a mystical and everyday quality: faith in life and the ability to laugh at tragedy.”

“In her personal orphanhood, Josefina recognizes an unlikely empathy with the dispossessed in Argentina, historical orphans adopted by the maternal Eva Perón,” added the director. “In today’s Argentina, overshadowed by the rise of the extreme right that shamelessly evokes the days of military rule, I am interested in recovering that past when the country still had a productive matrix and there was hope for the future.”

Actress, screenwriter, and director Alché wrote and directed “Puan” alongside Benjamín Naishtat (“Glaxo”). The film won the Silver Shell for Actor and Screenplay at the San Sebastián Film Festival, was nominated for the Goya Awards, and was a box office hit in Argentina.

She co-wrote Lucrecia Martel’s “Nuestra tierra” and wrote and directed the feature film “A Family Submerged,” which won the Horizontes Latinos Award in San Sebastián, the Ingmar Bergman Award for Best First Feature at the Goteborg Film Festival, Best Screenplay at the Lima Film Festival, and Best Director at Ficunam.

Alché’s latest is currently in the financing stages and is aiming to shoot in the second half of 2027. Renowned French cinematographer Hélène Louvart (“La Chimera,” “The Lost Daughter”) has also joined the project, as have “Divine Love” editor Livia Serpa and “I’m Still Here” sound director Laura Zimerman. This is the third collaboration between the Argentinian director and Tatiana Leite’s Bubbles Project, and the fourth collaboration between Bubbles and Barbara Francisco’s Pasto Cine.

“My collaboration with Bárbara Francisco of Pasto Cine, whom I met during the EAVE Puentes workshop in 2013, and with director María Alché, goes back more than a decade,” Leite tells Variety. “María makes singular films, and I am fascinated by her direction of actors and by the dreamlike dimension that permeates reality in her work.”

“When they sent me the screenplay for ‘I Love You and Today Everything Looks Beautiful,’ I discovered something even more precious in my reading, something that moved me deeply from beginning to end,” she adds. “‘I Love You’ is a period film, yet it feels entirely relevant to the world we live in today.”

Francisco notes how a large part of the film’s team, including Louvart and Serpa, “has shared a close and lasting bond since working together on ‘A Family Submerged.’” “This bond is rooted in a shared vision of the world and a common approach to filmmaking. For María Alché’s new film, I’m once again delighted to join forces with Tatiana Leite, Christoph Friedel (Pandora), and welcome Elastica Films in Spain and Maneki Films in France”.

Bubbles Project is one of Brazil’s leading co-production forces, having recently been involved in high-profile projects such as Abinash Bikram Shah’s “Elephants in the Fog” and Pedro Pinho’s “I Only Rest in the Storm.” They have recently wrapped shooting on Miguel Gomes’s “Selvajaria,” which was filmed in Bahia, and are in development on “May God Repay You” by “Benzinho” director Gustavo Pizzi, “Dora and Vera” by “Malu” director Pedro Freire, and Valentina Homem’s feature debut “Under de Baobab Tree.”