#455 - Laura Citarella on Trenque Lauquen + Saim Sadiq, Ali Junejo & Rasti Farooq on Joyland

Welcome to a new episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast. This week we’re excited to present a Q&A from Trenque Laquen, a Main Slate selection of the 60th New York Film Festival, opening in our theaters on April 21 from director Laura Citarella, with Q&As with Citarella and actor Ezequiel Pierri on April 21 at 6pm and April 22 at 12:15pm and an intro at 6pm.

But first, listen to a special Q&A with the team behind Joyland, a selection of the 52nd edition of New Directors/New Films currently in progress through Sunday, April 9. Director Saim Sadiq and cast members Ali Junejo and Rasti Farooq discuss the film with New Directors/New Films co-chair Florence Almozini. Co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, tickets to New Directors/New Films are available at newdirectors.org

Laura Citarella’s enormously pleasurable Trenque Lauquen takes viewers on a limitless journey through stories nested within stories set in and around the Argentinean city of Trenque Lauquen (“Round Lake”) and centered on the strange disappearance of a local academic named Laura (Laura Paredes).

Through initial inquiries by two colleagues—older boyfriend Rafael and a driver named Ezequiel with whom Laura had grown secretly close—we learn about her recent discoveries, including a new, unclassified species of flower and a series of old love letters hidden at the local library, which may help track her down. Yet as flashbacks and anecdotes pile up, we—and the film’s intrepid investigators—begin to realize that this intricately structured tale is larger and stranger than we could have imagined.

Citarella, a producer of the equally remarkable epic La Flor, has confidently crafted a series of interlocked romantic, biological, and ecological mysteries that create parallels between past lives and present dangers, invoke the rapture of obsessive pursuit, and salute the human need to find personal freedom and happiness.

Enjoy the conversation with Citarella and NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim, and don’t miss Trenque Laquen, opening in our theaters on April 21. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/trenquelauquen.