a film by Bernardo Britto2016 / USA / English, Spanish, Arabic / Comedy

87 min / HD / 16:9 / Dolby 5.1

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LOGLINEA young French woman hires a filmmaker to document her self-imposed political asylum in Argentina after supposedly leaking highly confidential government information.

SHORT SYNOPSISA filmmaker receives a series of panicked emails and phone calls from a young French woman – Jacqueline Dumont. She implores him to travel to Argentina to document her self-imposed political exile after she supposedly leaks highly confidential government secrets detailing a planned assassination. Jacqueline expects severe fallout and wants the filmmaker recording everything in case anything happens to her. As soon as the filmmaker and his two interns arrive at Jacqueline’s Argentine remote holistic center safe haven, however, they begin to think she might be more interested in singing Britney Spears songs and hanging out with her new friend than helping the filmmakers unearth a huge government conspiracy. Nevertheless, they soldier on, desperately hoping they will somehow end up with some semblance of a worthwhile film and maybe – just maybe – they’ll find a kernel of truth in Jacqueline’s paranoid ramblings.

FESTIVALSSundance Film FestivalRotterdam Film Festival

TECH SPECSRun Time: 87 minAspect Ratio: 16:9Shooting Format: HDSound: Dolby 5.1Country: USALanguage: English, Spanish, Arabic

PRESS“Quick-witted (...) satirical, wry.”

NEWSWEEK

“[An] engaging performance by the charming Rutherford.”INDIEWIRE

“Driven by Cenac’s drily witty performance (...) [the film] is a hilarious, low-key misadventure.”VIBE

“A playful, lo-fi travelogue.”THE NEW YORKER

“A wild ride.”FLICKREEL

INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTORHow did the initial idea for film develop?There’s always a number of completely different ideas and concepts that I’m playing around with in my head. It’s just a matter of which ones fit together and seeing what disparate thoughts are actually part of the same story. For this one, I knew I wanted to have this loose documentary/film essay structure. I wanted to have a woman in the center of it hiding out somewhere. It all started coming together when I watched an interview with Edward Snowden, who was only 29 when he decided to leak those documents. All of a sudden, he seemed very real and just like some normal dude. I saw a strange parallel between what he did and what artists try to do, where you have something to share and you think it’s important and you want the world to hear it. It all just flowed from there.

How did the device of narrating Jacqueline’s story through the filmmaker’s lens and voice come about?Originally, the story was going to be from Jacqueline’s point of view. I had gotten frustrated with myself for writing three short films in a row that were all about guys having existential crises, so I decided to try to write something for a woman but it just felt inauthentic. I don’t know what it’s like to be a 25-year-old woman in this world. I started thinking about how most female characters throughout history are actually just a man’s interpretation of what women are like and it started to make me feel weird. I felt like I’d be doing more harm than good. So I decided to acknowledge that and step back and frame the movie from the filmmaker’s point of view, where he is actually hijacking her story to tell his own. And she, in turn, is hijacking the story of this assassination attempt to tell hers. And then there’s me, outside of all of it, using all these characters and plots and conflicts to try and tell my own story too.

Did you write the script with Camille Rutherford in mind? I started writing it with someone else in mind and it was going okay, kind of slow, kind of whatever. And then I met Camille at a film festival and instantly was like, “This is Jacqueline.” When I got home, I threw everything out that I had already written and started over from scratch. Camille in real life is not really that similar to Jacqueline, but she gave me a great image and voice to write to. She was the very first person I showed the script to, and if she had said she wasn’t interested, I straight up just would not have made this movie.

How did Wyatt Cenac become involved? I always wanted someone that felt and looked very different from Jacqueline to play the director. I also wanted someone that just had a great voice and a natural sense of rhythm and timing, since so much of the voiceover has a very rhythmic quality to it. I was rewatching Medicine for Melancholy or An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (which he is an EP on) when I thought of him and realized he would be absolutely perfect. We sent him the script, and my producer Ben and I met him after one of his stand up shows. He’s very smart and knowledgeable, but he’s able to talk about things without seeming snobby or pretentious, which I always thought was important for a character that’s going to spend 90 minutes asking kind of silly questions about “the meaning of life” and “the importance of art” and stuff.

Was the film firmly scripted or did improvisation on set factor into the final product?We shot a lot of footage. We went down to Argentina with a real full script with real scenes and real dialogue and we shot all of that. But then we also shot a lot more new stuff. I would just add new scenes and shots whenever I could, most of which is improvised. I tried to keep it feeling as much like a real documentary as possible and kept encouraging people to forget the lines. Camille is a trained stage actor and she really wanted to do the lines justice. So a lot of her performance is actually word for word from the script but she’s somehow able to make it seem like it’s all happening for real, which I guess is what great actors do. A lot of the local cast were non-actors and we just tried to make them feel as comfortable as possible, so those scenes have a lot of improv in them.

You and the other filmmakers involved in making this film have a very long-lasting close relationship. Can you touch on your collaborative “origin story?”I met most of the main people who worked on this movie when we were all 16-17 years old. We met at an NYU summer program for high school students. It was the first time I was in the presence of other people that really loved movies, and we’ve all just been best friends ever since. That was almost ten years ago. Now we all collaborate on each other’s movies.

What do you hope the audience would take from this film?I just hope they have fun watching it. I hope they are able to relate to things I’m talking about and, if so, maybe they can feel less alone in those feelings or something. I don’t think I have any lessons that I’m trying to teach. I’m just trying to entertain people and express myself.

WYATT CENAC is a writer and actor, known for his work on The Daily Show, King of the Hill, Medicine for Melancholy, Hits, Sleepwalk with Me, BoJack Horseman and more. He currently hosts Night Train with Wyatt Ce-nac, a stand-up comedy showcase, every Monday night in Brooklyn.

CAMILLE RUTHERFORD was born and raised in Paris, France, where she studied acting at Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique of Paris. She has worked primarily in France as a theater actor. Over the past few years, she has acted in films such as Blue is the Warmest Color, Holy Motors, and Mary Queen of Scots. Camille will be on screen in two French films in 2016 and is currently in post-production on her directorial debut, a short film. Jacqueline (Argentine) is her first role in an American movie.

JAMES BENSON is a filmmaker and actor based in NYC. His work as a producer includes The Places Where We Lived [2013], Master Muscles [2014] and Jacqueline (Argentine) [2016]. As a writer/director he’s made shorts, music videos and two feature films – Nothing Yet [2010] & Wisdom Teeth [2013].

SARAH WILLIS is a performer and playwright based in New York City. Recent theater work includes perform-ing in Elevator Repair Service Theater Company’s Fondly, Collette Richland by Sibyl Kempson (New York Theatre Workshop, 2015), Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag by Sibyl Kempson (Abrons Arts Center, 2015) and Play-ground by Derek Spaldo (The Brick, 2014). Sarah’s first play, Vultures, premiered at Dixon Place in 2014. Recent film work includes her role in Jacqueline (Argentine). Sarah received a Bachelor of Arts in Theater from Eugene Land College The New School for Liberal Arts in 2013. She grew up in Ridgewood, NJ and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

BRETT POTTER // PRODUCERBrett Potter is a New York based filmmaker. His narrative credits include Martha Marcy May Marlene (associate producer, Sundance 2011), The Fort (producer, Sundance 2012), All That I Am (producer, SXSW Special Jury Prize 2013), Fishtail (producer, Tribeca 2014), The Places Where We Lived (pro-ducer, SXSW and Jury Prize AFI 2013), Master Muscles (producer, Sundance 2014), Yearbook (pro-ducer, Jury Prize Animation Sundance 2014) and The Benefactor (co-producer, Tribeca and Karlovy Vary). His work has a collective 10+ million hits online.

Brett also co-directed the short film Sea Devil, which won prizes at Slamdance and Fantasia Film Festivals, as well as playing Seattle, Stanley, and Rooftop Film Festivals. Brett is an alumni of the Sun-dance Institute’s Creative Producing Fellowship. He grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana.

BEN COHEN // PRODUCERBen Cohen is a New York based film producer. He graduated from Brown University with honors in Literary Arts (2011). He has produced Wisdom Teeth (2012), The Places Where We Lived (2013), Master Muscles (2014), and Jacqueline (Argentine) (2016).

CREW

BERNARDO BRITTO // WRITER, DIRECTORBernardo Britto was born in Rio de Janeiro and grad-uated from NYU. He co-directed the feature film Nothing Yet and received the NBR Animation Grant in 2011. He was selected as a 2012 Marcie Bloom fel-low. He has directed award winning animated shorts, including The Places Where We ( Grand Jury Prize for Animation; AFI Fest 2013) and Yearbook (Jury Prize for Best Short; Sundance 2014).

MAIN CREW

Written and Directed byBERNARDO BRITTO Producers BRETT POTTER BENJAMIN COHEN Executive Producers BOB COMPTON CARL H. LINDNER III JASON MICHAEL BERMAN Co-Producers MATT LINDNER JAMES BENSON Associate Producers SAMANTHA ZALAZNICK NULLAH SARKER Director of Photography ERIC K. YUE Production Designer ALEXA HAAS Production Sound Mixer DIANA SAGRISTA CARRASCO Music by BRIAN MCOMBER Music Supervision KYLE MCKEVENY Casting by KATE GELLER JESSICA KELLY

Line Producer TAYLOR SHUNG

MAIN CAST

Director WYATT CENACJacqueline CAMILLE RUTHERFORDJason JAMES BENSONErik MARTIN ANDERSONKayla SARAH WILLISEnrique ENRIQUE DURAKristin KRISTIN DURAMarcos MARCOS FUNES PERALTAFernando FERNANDO DONADIOThe Producer ALFREDO NARCISOReporter #1 DUSTIN DEFAReporter #2 ALEX KARPOVSKYThe Ex Boyfriend BERT HAELVOETThe Private Eye RICHARD KINDThe Editor EFREN HERNANDEZWoman on the Date ELEANORE PIENTANephew ADAR TULLOCHNasir Al Nawala AMR EL-BAYOUMIInterview Show Host EYAS YOUNIS