Benjamin Naishtat: “For Javier Milei, cinema is useless”

Author of the thrilling El Profesor with Maria Alché, the Argentinian filmmaker looks back on its making and the chaotic political situation in his country since the arrival in power of the new anarcho-capitalist Prime Minister

The Professor features an Argentinian university professor in the midst of an existential crisis following the death of his mentor, while the country itself is plunged into a societal crisis. And this is the first film that you co-direct. Was it you or your co-director Maria Alché who came up with the idea?

Benjamin Naishtat: The Professor was born from a common desire. Maria is an actress, we discovered her in 2003 at Lucrecia Martel with The Holy Girl but she also made a film, Sumergida familyin 2018. We live together and have two children. And we regularly spoke about our shared admiration for Marcelo Subiotto, an immense theatre actor who is very little used by the cinema. The best of his generation in our opinion. I had already offered him the lead role in my previous Red but he had declined because he had committed to acting in a play and didn't want to let go of the director. Maria had directed him in her film and we both agreed to try to finally give him the leading role he deserves. So we started writing together with that in mind. Then, very quickly, the idea came to set the action in Puan, a street in Buenos Aires where Maria had studied philosophy and literature. My father is a philosophy professor at another university, so it was a subject that was close to us, as it was to Marcello who, in his free time, studies philosophy. And then the pandemic arrived. Like everyone else, we found ourselves locked up at home. All our individual projects were put on hold. And we took advantage of it to really get started writing what would become The professor.

Finding financing for a film starring a sixty-year-old actor who had never held the top billing before was an obstacle course?

I'm not going to lie to you: the idea of ​​talking about philosophy with an actor as unbankable as Marcelo as the headliner didn't necessarily spontaneously arouse wild enthusiasm! (laughs) But when our producers started looking for financing, they immediately got very good feedback. And it finally took just one year to raise the budget, which is very quick in Argentina. We were lucky that this first impression was confirmed when the film was released in theaters, since it was a huge success with over 160,000 admissions and is still being screened in theaters a year later. It had a real cultural impact because President Javier Milei even tweeted against it!

What do you think created this impact? The fact that he anticipated and then embraced the political and social situation that your country has been experiencing since Milei came to power in December 2023?

Not necessarily, at least not primarily. I think that a lot of people have mainly projected themselves into this character of a philosophy teacher facing this moment in his life where he asks himself the question of how he is going to occupy the rest of his existence. A questioning that assails us or will assail us all at one time or another in our lives. It is really this empathy with this man that really provoked this attachment to The professor in my opinion.

Yet, The professor is not only a portrait of a man in existential crisis, it tells or more precisely anticipates the crisis that your country is currently experiencing… Has this political aspect also nourished your writing or has it simply arisen from what this professor is experiencing?

Honestly, at the time of writing, it was impossible to imagine the emergence of Milei, so spectacular and unexpected was it. And for a very simple reason: his party had not even been created yet! Milei became known on TV as a political columnist in very trashy shows. The wave he created, carried by his incendiary speech against culture, education and more broadly the public service, was sudden and swept everything away. We could not therefore anticipate what was going to happen, but I think in hindsight that we nevertheless unconsciously sensed something of this order. We had the intuition that the model of Argentine society was running out of steam. This is what led us to write, for example, the scene at the end of the film in the street where the teachers and students face the police… A scene that, since then, has really taken place in defense of the national system of Argentine public universities, quite unique in Latin America, for a hundred years, that Milei wanted to undermine. This public and free university is one of the first things that his government tried to close. The massive response from the street has delayed this deadline. But until when?

How do you divide up the work with Maria Alché in writing? One focuses more on the structure and the other on the dialogues?

We did everything together. We organized an exquisite corpse system with a file in which each of us wrote scenes that the other discovered and completed. It was this fluidity that pushed us to co-direct for the first time

And here again there is no division of tasks?

We didn't want to split things up because it doesn't happen that often to make a film! We didn't want to lose a crumb of pleasure. So yes, we both took care of everything. Even if it meant driving part of the team a little crazy! I'm thinking of our director of photography, the exceptional Hélène Louvart, who had to synthesize when our points of view diverged on a scene. Which is never easy when you only have 5 weeks of shooting. But, despite everything, I remain convinced that in the end the result is better when you direct as a pair: the spectrum of ideas is broader, we will be more careful not to make mistakes… I think that the future of cinema can come from this idea of ​​association

What led you to Hélène Louvart?

I first appreciate my luck in having been able to work with her, who has collaborated with so many legendary filmmakers, from Wim Wenders to Agnès Varda, including Leos Carax, Claire Denis, Alice Rohrwacher… And we owe her presence to Maria because Hélène had wanted to sign the lighting of her first film as director. Maria suggested that she read The professorHélène liked it. And among her many talents, Hélène has that of knowing how to adapt to all budgets, including the smallest ones like ours. For me, Hélène is a living film school. Once you think of a scene in a can, she can discreetly come and tell you that we need another shot that will be useful to you in the editing. And every time, she sees it right

What instructions did you give him in terms of visual atmosphere?

Making a solar film! And this by favoring natural light as much as possible, which is why we wanted to shoot in summer. We wanted a solar film to create a contrast with the heavy subjects that we were going to tackle and to infuse it with lightness.

A balance that we also find in the writing of your characters, this teacher who we feel is overwhelmed by the situation but who will turn out to be more courageous than we would have thought, his colleague who is more brilliant but also more annoying to whom we nevertheless also end up becoming attached…

With Maria, we had a basic rule: love all our characters! We didn't want monochromatic, Manichean characters. That's why our hero also had to be a bit miserable because he was jealous, a closed conservative while appearing fragile and noble. And if his younger colleague sometimes seems pedantic, we also see that he is a brilliant man constantly looking for new ideas.

You who dreamed of directing Marcelo Subiotto, what impressed you most about him?

He gave a lot to the film. He is quite hermetic in his preparation. He works on his own, communicates little. There is something mystical about him and in him. I often saw him in a state of grace. He made his character much more alive than he was in the writing.

When you started editing, had the political system already changed in Argentina? And did that influence the final stretch of your work?

We edited in early 2023, the year of the elections, and already at that time we felt a wave that was going to be difficult to stop. So yes, I think we were aware of the country's shift to the extreme right or more precisely to an anarcho-capitalist ideology, which considers that university, philosophy, music or cinema are useless. And that had a concrete influence on the end of the editing: we cut certain scenes that suddenly became a bit heavy or that led the story towards something too dark.

How does the arrival of Javier Milei to power impact your future projects?

We are in an unprecedented moment since the return of democracy in 1983, since the Argentine equivalent of the CNC was closed in December because for this government, cinema is useless and because they have identified us as enemies. The result was not long in coming: there is almost no production in Argentina at the moment. And I know that my next project can only exist with international funding, instead of relying on the success ofThe teacher. It's like starting from scratch. But we'll keep fighting, there's even a pleasure in doing so. We feel, like our character deep down, more alive than ever!

The Professor. By Benjamin Naishtat and Maria Alché. With Marcelo Subiotto, Leonada Sharaglia, Julieta Zylberberg… Duration: 1h50. Released on July 3, 2024