Simon has a strong twitch that drives him to shake his head, meaninglessly. He sometimes dribbles. The way he looks out at the world from under his brows, especially when people are talking to him, suggests he can’t quite keep up with what they’re saying. When he meets a group of young people from a local daycare center for the intellectually disabled, he naturally falls in with them. He befriends Pehuen Pedre (playing a version of himself) on the top of a mountain, where the group has walked and gotten into difficulties in high winds. When they all manage to get down and back on the bus, Simon gets on board with them. This is where he belongs.
Simon of the Mountain, Argentinian director Federico Luis’ moving, puzzling and wholly original debut feature, which won the top prize at Critics’ Week in Cannes, is a callback to Luis Bunuel...
Simon of the Mountain, Argentinian director Federico Luis’ moving, puzzling and wholly original debut feature, which won the top prize at Critics’ Week in Cannes, is a callback to Luis Bunuel...
- 5/27/2024
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
The Face of An(other): Luis Complicates Identity Politics
Although it’s playing quite purposefully with various ambiguities and motifs, Federico Luis’ directorial debut Simon de la montaña (Simon of the Mountain) is most successful at obscuring the usual cliches of identity exploration. Its title recalls Luis Bunuel’s religious themed 1965 short film “Simon of the Desert,” and there are some comparable allusions to temptation and forsakenness in some of the minor metaphorical moments explored. But Luis instead aims to challenge perceptions of what’s culturally acceptable in not only the crafting of an identity, but also the construction of community through an inverse scenario, i.e.,…...
Although it’s playing quite purposefully with various ambiguities and motifs, Federico Luis’ directorial debut Simon de la montaña (Simon of the Mountain) is most successful at obscuring the usual cliches of identity exploration. Its title recalls Luis Bunuel’s religious themed 1965 short film “Simon of the Desert,” and there are some comparable allusions to temptation and forsakenness in some of the minor metaphorical moments explored. But Luis instead aims to challenge perceptions of what’s culturally acceptable in not only the crafting of an identity, but also the construction of community through an inverse scenario, i.e.,…...
- 5/15/2024
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
"At least you can see they're really trying to make a good festival," commented, with typical dry wit, one of the (very) few international colleagues the Brigade considers at least something of a crypto-Ferronian. Hard to argue with that, as Locarno's program still shows the signs of having to battle back and forth with the two heaviest lifters on the festival calendar, Cannes and Venice—yet mostly, the Ferroni Brigade had a grand time this year.
Of course, more often then not, when dispirited acquaintances met a merry Brigadier in between screenings, the answer to their inevitable question would be: "Coming from (and returning to) a retrospective, of course!"—but also among new films, we ended up with more truly interesting stuff than in the previous year. Not all of it true donkey material, for different reasons. Nevertheless, there were quite a few Ferronian pleasures out there, some of them more touching than others,...
Of course, more often then not, when dispirited acquaintances met a merry Brigadier in between screenings, the answer to their inevitable question would be: "Coming from (and returning to) a retrospective, of course!"—but also among new films, we ended up with more truly interesting stuff than in the previous year. Not all of it true donkey material, for different reasons. Nevertheless, there were quite a few Ferronian pleasures out there, some of them more touching than others,...
- 9/21/2011
- MUBI
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