Pasto Cine Boards María Alché's 'I Love You and Today Everything Looks Beautiful'

Argentina's Pasto Cine has boarded "I Love You and Today Everything Looks Beautiful," the new film by María Alché, co-director of "Puan." The project pairs Brazil's Bubbles Project with Spain's Elastica Films, Germany's Pandora Film and France's Maneki Films as co-producers.

The film is set between the 1950s and 1960s and follows Josefina and Jorge after the death of their parents. The orphaned children move in with their irreverent aunt Berta and start a new life in the big city, in a house frequented by intellectuals where political conspiracies are hatched.

Alché described the film as "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," the director said. "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."

Who is María Alché?

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, earned a Goya Award nomination, and became a box office hit in Argentina.

She co-wrote Lucrecia Martel's "Nuestra tierra" and wrote and directed "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.

What talent has joined the project?

The film is currently in financing stages and aims to shoot in the second half of 2027. The team includes:

• French cinematographer Hélène Louvart ("La Chimera," "The Lost Daughter")
• Editor Livia Serpa ("Divine Love")
• Sound director Laura Zimerman ("I'm Still Here")

The production marks the third collaboration between Alché and Tatiana Leite's Bubbles Project, and the fourth 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 said. "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 added. "'I Love You' is a period film, yet it feels entirely relevant to the world we live in today."

Francisco noted that 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.'" She added: "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."

Why does Bubbles Project matter?

Bubbles Project ranks among Brazil's leading co-production forces. Recent credits include Abinash Bikram Shah's "Elephants in the Fog" and Pedro Pinho's "I Only Rest in the Storm." The company has wrapped shooting on Miguel Gomes's "Selvajaria," filmed in Bahia, and is developing "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."

With financing now underway and Louvart behind the camera, "I Love You and Today Everything Looks Beautiful" positions a five-country coalition to bring Alché's portrait of mid-century Argentina to screens after 2027.