Maeve Jinkings Joins Cabildo 71, a Convent-Prison Escape Drama

Maeve Jinkings, the Brazilian actor whose performance anchored Walter Salles' Oscar-winning "I'm Still Here," will join the cast of "Cabildo 71," a prison-convent escape drama selected for Ventana Sur's Proyecta Co-Production Forum.

Jinkings is best known for her roles in Kleber Mendonça Filho's "Neighboring Sounds" and "Aquarius." Here she takes an unlikely turn: she plays one of the nuns.

Victoria "Pitoka" Pena writes and directs. Her debut feature, "Delia," won the Silver Biznaga for Best Director at the Málaga Film Festival. Pena's script is based on real events, and the real events are remarkable.

Cabildo was a prison-convent in Uruguay run by the nuns of the Good Shepherd. Its prisoners included Lucía Topolansky, who later became Uruguay's vice president and the wife of former President José "Pepe" Mujica; her twin sister Elia Topolansky; and other women who became prominent in Uruguayan political and social life.

The plot follows La Parda, who joins forces with 12 political prisoners to form a women's choir. The choir is a cover. During Mass on March 8, 1970, the women rush down the chapel aisle and escape under the eyes of the nuns guarding them. A year later, La Parda is captured again — this time held by police, not nuns, alongside a growing number of prisoners including her sister Lucía. The two barely speak. La Parda senses Lucía is hiding something. Behind the walls, a plan forms for what the producers call the biggest women's prison escape in history.

What does the film change about the story?

Pena said she wants intimacy, not hagiography. "I am interested in telling this story from an intimate and personal point of view, giving this dimension precedence over the heroic narrative of the feat. Without diminishing what was achieved — quite the opposite — I want to delve into the issues that shaped the prisoners' lives within the intimacy of the prison: the differences among them that give substance to their experience, in order to explore identity, betrayal and the need to find one's own sense of justice," Pena said.

That is a promise worth testing. Prison-escape films tend toward spectacle; Pena's statement commits her to the opposite. Whether the material allows both at once is a question the finished film will have to answer.

Producer Eugenia Olascuaga of Monarca Films set out a second constraint. "We want to portray the female characters within their variety of social class and the kind of life they led, not under the 'guerrilla women' stereotype that the popular imagination tends to default to," Olascuaga said.

She added: "The eight Uruguayan actresses who will play the Tupamaras are confirmed — it was very important for us that they all be Uruguayan, as a political and artistic choice."

The casting is specific:

• Graciela Ingold and Carolina Genoni play the Topolansky sisters
• Camila Parard, Renata Denevi, Luche Bolten and Matilde Colacce fill out the ensemble
• Jinkings plays one of the convent-prison's nuns

Who is paying for it?

The financing has drawn international support. Una Presencia (Argentina) and Vitrine Filmes (Brazil/Spain) have come on board as co-producers, joining lead producer Monarca Films of Uruguay and Brazilian co-producer Boulevard Filmes. The project is backed by Argentina's INCAA minority fund and the Ancine–ACAU bilateral minority fund.

Four countries, two public funds, one debut-laureate director and an Oscar-winning lead: on paper, "Cabildo 71" has the profile festival programmers track. But minority funds cover only fractions of budgets, and the source names no sales agent or distributor. The project's next test is whether Ventana Sur closes that gap.

Principal photography runs September to November next year. Ventana Sur takes place in Montevideo, Uruguay, over November 30 – December 4 — in the country whose history the film revisits.

By Tom Whitfield