LIVES SHAPED BY THE SEA

Argentinian director and producer Javier Beltramino has co-directed his directorial debut 'Death of a Comedian'  together with Diego Peretti, an iconic Argentine actor and writer. The film was funded by around 10.000 individual inverstors and was released earlier this year.

In this interview, we speak with Javier Beltramino about filmmaking as a political and emotional language. He reflects on power, displacement, and creative process, and on how cinema can challenge dominant narratives while opening space for doubt, resistance, and collective memory.

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Interview by Elvan Levent

Javier, let’s begin at the roots: what first drew you into cinema, and when did you know filmmaking would become your life’s path?

When I was a child, I carried a deep existential anguish: the idea of death kept me awake night after night. I didn’t grow up in a religious family, so the possibility of nothingness was unbearable to me. At the same time, I couldn’t stop drawing things that didn’t exist, and when my dad bought a home video camera, that urge to create simply found a new format: I started making very rudimentary animated short films in stop motion, shaping little plasticine characters frame by frame. Until that moment, cinema was just another one of my games, like playing football or strumming the guitar.

But one day I was holding the guitar and a friend asked me to play a song he knew. And that’s when I realized I didn’t know how to play a single one—I only used the guitar to compose. That’s when I understood something that connected all my activities: the need to invent things that didn’t exist was my way of coping with that existential anxiety. Creating was how I won small battles against death. Every time I wrote a song, imagined a story, or instinctively invented a disruptive play on a football field, I was defeating, for a brief moment, the void.

When I finally understood that the war against death is unwinnable, and that life is about winning battles until the very last breath, I held on to cinema. It was the only language that allowed me to integrate all those games I loved.

And there was something else, something important: downstairs from the apartment where my family lived, there was a beautiful video store. I became friends with the owners, who very generously let me organise hundreds of VHS tapes every day in exchange for taking home two films. I remember Spielberg’s movies in particular—they felt like a personal invitation to step, once and for all, into the world of cinema.

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You waited 6 years to make The Death of a Comedian, how does it feel for you to have this film being made finally- are you satisfied with the process and the result?

I was very eager to shoot my first feature film, but I wanted to share that adventure with someone else. I didn’t know Diego Peretti personally at the time, but I greatly enjoyed his performances in both films and TV series, and I was also interested in his ideas and reflections in interviews.

The project was born out of a desire that was both deeply personal and somewhat whimsical (as the purest desires often are). Nine years ago, when I approached the café table where we both used to have coffee every morning, I introduced myself and suggested that we co-direct a feature film based on a story he felt the need to tell. Little by little, I convinced him to become a director—something he had never intended to do.

The process was very interesting because, while for many years the project remained stuck in the drawers of various streaming platform executives, the script was always there, visible on “our table”. We never stopped talking about how we would tell the story as directors. I kept conveying to him my certainty that, one day, we would make the film.

Those years became a creative exercise that I truly enjoyed. Peretti and I realized that, fortunately, we understood each other very well. So much so that the project gradually evolved into a more and more experimental film. Peretti became so deeply involved in the story that he asked to take on the role of screenwriter, setting aside an initial version written by someone else. From my side, I began accompanying him in the search for ideas that could translate what he had in mind into images and help achieve a very particular tone. In Death of a Comedian, tone is essential for allowing the audience to be carried by the story.

Once the film was finally financed, the roles were clear and everything flowed in a very positive way. We were fully aware of the risks we were taking, but we worked extensively on the different narrative and visual layers to achieve that specific tone, knowing that every decision and every risk had its justification. That is why, once on set, we both felt very confident, trusting and respecting all the previous work, which was faithful to Peretti’s vision.

As for the final result, I am very happy. I believe both the story and the tone work well. And although my role was that of a co-director—focused on directing Peretti and translating the tone of his script into images—it is a film I fully stand behind. It is deeply human, in the sense that it does not respond to any algorithm, so to speak. That doesn’t make it better or worse, but it does make it unique. I think it is a film that invites discussion about cinema itself, because it is creating a certain divide among audiences—but it is a cinematic divide, not a political one, which is something rather uncommon these days.

Was the film funded by the Orsai community? We are familiar with the idea of short films getting crowdfunded but it is not very common for a feature film- can we say that this way of funding is getting more popular now, or is it an exception? 

The Orsai Community has existed for 15 years and is led by the Argentine writer Hernán Casciari. After ten years of successfully publishing a literary magazine without advertising or public subsidies—financed by readers from all over the world—Casciari decided in 2020 to replicate that model for filmmaking.

From the very first film he produced (La uruguaya), his proposal differed from traditional crowdfunding. Each person who invests receives equity and becomes a “co-producer”, with a degree of participation in the creative process. I believe this is what has generated such strong interest in joining Orsai’s audiovisual projects.

Death of a Comedian was Orsai’s fourth production, and thanks to this system the project was able to come to life. In each project, the level of participation varies according to Orsai’s decision; Orsai acted as producer and administrator of the funds raised $2 million. In total, 10,190 people became co-producers of our film. It may sound complicated to give participation to so many people, but I’ve realized it isn’t. Personally, I would have liked them to be even more involved. My gratitude to all of them is endless.

That said, this type of financing and production model for feature films is still an exception. Hopefully, more communities like this—each with its own variations—will emerge. Any model that expands the possibilities of telling stories is welcome. I believe that, when it comes to feature films, communities can become one more tool to help finance large projects. I’m particularly interested in exploring this further, going a step beyond and committing to collective creation.

For example, I have already written my next feature film and I am open to using every tool the industry offers to finance it as soon as possible. After this experience, community-based models will always be part of the “toolbox” of any producer/director—not only because of their financial contribution, but because these communities genuinely want to be involved and to help solve very practical problems (from facilitating locations to urgently finding a motorcycle, as actually happened during Death of a Comedian). 

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You wrote, directed, and acted in your short film Lone Wolf together with your son Antonio. How personal is this film for you, and as a director, do you perceive cinema as something inherently personal?

Yes, Lone Wolf is a deeply personal short film. I made it out of necessity. We moved from South America to Belgium supposedly for just a few months, but time kept stretching —against my will— and Antonio eventually began attending school in Brussels. In that context, something happened with his teacher that was, for both him and me, profoundly sad. After that day when my son walked into the classroom crying, with the teacher demanding that he stop —as if crying were a misbehavior— and I left the school also in tears, I felt a visceral need to film. The short gave me a way to release everything, yes, but it also allowed me to explore the very different ways children and adults perceive the same problem.

At the same time, I wanted to bring attention to something that I quickly realized went far beyond that one teacher. A problem that —at least from my experience— is deeply rooted in the Belgian educational system: the repression of emotions.

On another level, Lone Wolf is also a portrait of my own experience as an immigrant, and of the enormous contradictions between the progressive discourse of many institutions based in Brussels —the diplomatic heart of Europe— and what actually happens in daily life. I was especially interested in the reality of third-generation Belgians who still aren’t fully integrated into society and who, in a subtle way, are blamed for “not integrating”. It’s something I myself felt firsthand.

I didn’t make the short to “pick a fight” with Belgium —not at all. My intention was to open a debate, a conversation. Unfortunately, although Lone Wolf was recognized at many festivals around the world, it was not well received in Brussels. Quite the opposite.

As for whether I see cinema as something personal, beyond this particular case that was born from a very intimate need, the answer is yes. Every film is personal. Even a mainstream production is shaped by the director’s gaze: their decisions, fears, desires, and secrets. To a greater or lesser extent, every artistic creation is always personal.

Who are the filmmakers, artists, or even personal experiences that have most shaped your creative vision?

First, I have to mention Spielberg again, because he was the one who opened the door for me to play at making films when I was very young — both through the movies he directed and the ones he produced in the ’80s. In my adolescence I discovered Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Ettore Scola, and later came Alexander Payne, Paul Thomas Anderson, Juan José Campanella and Damián Szifrón, just to name a few.

If I had to summarize my cinephile DNA, I’d say that American cinema from the ’70s and ’80s and the Commedia all’italiana are my lighthouse, the beam of the projector. But a lighthouse would be useless to ships without its seconds of darkness. And that’s where the personal dimension comes in. I’m not talking about darkness in a dramatic sense, but rather that place where imagination lights up. I remember a Japanese film —I can’t recall which one— in which a teacher asks a boy if he’s afraid of the dark. The boy proudly answers no. And the teacher replies: “What a pity, then you have no imagination.”

I was always afraid of the dark; I filled it with monsters, but also with beautiful fantasies. In some way, that mixture shaped the way I look at the world and the way I create. And years later, becoming the father of my two sons —Antonio and Lucca— deepened that relationship even further. Through their eyes I rediscovered that original way of seeing — tender, curious, instinctively poetic — the one that reminds you that wonder is not an exception but a natural state. They brought me back to that first innocence and reopened a creative place I thought adulthood had swallowed.

In that personal vision, there’s a theme that returns again and again in my short films and in my feature debut: the attempt to recover the first gaze we have of the world — the gaze of childhood. That gaze that finds it absurd that a car costs more than a dog —a living being— and that marvels at discovering animal shapes in the clouds. Beauty and uselessness as a compass in the midst of life’s senselessness, a senselessness we adults insist on filling every day with problems that —mostly— don’t matter much.

And then there’s music, which for me is inseparable from cinema. As a teenager I listened to a lot of Erik Satie and Miles Davis while riding the bus. There was something almost magical in that ritual: I’d put on my headphones and immediately the window turned into a movie screen; the city stopped being a documentary record and became an intimate fiction. It gave me the distance I needed to rest from what I call “the excess of senselessness.” It was, somehow, the natural continuation of that darkness full of monsters and fantasies I mentioned earlier. Music acted like a kind of glue: it held together everything the darkness revealed and made it narrable — it turned it into cinema.

My relationship with music is so intense that I understand every film as if it were a song: the images are the music, the dialogues are the lyrics, the poem. Thanks to artists like Vinicius de Moraes and Tom Jobim, Homero Manzi, Discépolo, Leonard Cohen, Joaquín Sabina or Georges Brassens, I understood something fundamental: a melody can generate images in our minds, but a lyric overloaded with abstractions rarely does. Music is intangible and needs words we can touch, familiar objects. Vinicius’s poems never clumsily repeat what the music already expresses more efficiently. In filmmaking, I try to apply that same logic: let the image speak, and let the dialogue accompany without redundancy.

In the end, my paper boats —battered, ink-soaked— keep sailing toward that lighthouse, a lighthouse that will continue to be fed by new artists, new experiences, and by Antonio and Lucca’s way of looking at the world, for as long as my shadow keeps beating.

When you develop a new project, what element usually emerges first — the story, a character, or the visual atmosphere?

The first thing that usually appears is a phrase or a small anecdote that seems to beg, almost out loud, to become a story. Then comes the question of how it wants to be told. That’s when all the possibilities open up: animation or live action? A short film or a feature?

The answers to those questions usually arrive together with a clear sense of the visual atmosphere, the tone, the characters, and everything else. In my case, each of my films looks and feels very different, especially in terms of visual decisions and tone. I always try to choose different tools depending on what the story itself needs.

Looking back, which of your projects pushed you the most — and what did you discover about yourself as a filmmaker through that challenge?

Lone Wolf. Maybe because it was a project I needed to make. It wasn’t just desire — it was necessity. And after seeing the finished film, I realized how important that difference is compared to the rest of my work. That short, shot in four days with a tiny crew of only four people, directing my son and acting myself —something I had never imagined doing— came from a need that was as strong as it was intimate.

Now it’s clear to me that, beyond the desire to tell a story, it’s always preferable to also feel the need to tell it. I was genuinely surprised by how Lone Wolf resonated emotionally with people from different continents.

Humbly, I think that perhaps with that short I came a little closer to what Fernando Pessoa said about art: “it consists of making others feel what we feel”.

Communicating emotions with that intention is difficult. I suppose the key was allowing the images to carry the emotional weight, and letting the dialogues complement them without falling into grandiloquence or abstract ideas.

As in good songs, the music shows us images and the lyrics allow us to touch the objects that inhabit them. In that way, we can be transported right to the place where those emotions occur — those emotions we struggle to express in a linear way.

What do you believe gives a film the power to resonate far beyond its cultural boundaries?

I won’t pretend to be original: the famous phrase “paint your village and you will paint the whole world” applies perfectly to any artistic expression. We all know what the universal themes are — the ones that connect us as human beings. But the films that usually transcend borders and cultures are those that approach these big themes (fear, desire, anguish, joy, and so on) without naming them.

They tend to tell very personal experiences, rooted in very specific places. And I believe that’s what allows both the screenwriter and the director to avoid the mistake of explaining an emotion instead of simply telling a story. The story will take care of the rest on its own.

If you were to distill your cinematic philosophy into one sentence, what would it be?

I’m drawn to films that are born out of a true need to tell something specific, not just out of desire.

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Which stories or social realities do you feel remain underrepresented in Argentinian cinema today?

I’m from the city of Santa Fe, and when I was twenty I had to move to Buenos Aires —500 kilometers away— to study film. Argentina is a vast country, yet it’s often narrated almost exclusively from its capital. I think it would be incredibly valuable to see more films that bring to the surface the many different realities of the country’s interior.

And in that “interior” there are countless stories tied to one of Argentina’s most beautiful traits: it has always been a country with its doors open to the world. And not just in discourse or legal terms. The enormous number of immigrants we’ve welcomed over the years have historically integrated, quite naturally, into the social and cultural fabric across the entire country.

In your view, what role should cinema play in our understanding of society and politics- or should it play any role at all?

I believe cinema plays different roles within society. I don’t like when people speak about cinema with a kind of solemnity, as if it were destined to be the driving force behind cultural, social or political change. But when a film is honest —even if it’s a “light” comedy— it inevitably ends up reflecting the world we live in, and that can do more than entertain. It can generate small seismic movements, mostly imperceptible, that help bring to the surface the conversations people need to have as a community. I find that incredibly valuable.

I don’t believe in cinema as a pedagogical or propagandistic tool; I believe in cinema that offers questions rather than answers, that opens cracks where fresh air can enter. When a film dares to observe reality without explaining it, it often says more about politics than any explicit discourse.

Should a film primarily challenge viewers, or should it offer a space for escape — or perhaps a meaningful balance of both?

I think both things are necessary. Viewers look for stories that challenge them, but they also need a space to breathe. The challenge is finding that point where a film speaks to the audience in an intimate way, while also letting them rest a little from themselves. And that “rest” isn’t about disconnecting or becoming an empty vessel — quite the opposite. It’s a pause that prepares them better, that makes them more permeable.

Often, thanks to that moment of breathing room, the story sinks in more deeply and reappears the next day as a memory that unexpectedly enters into dialogue with their own life.

With the rapid rise of digital distribution and emerging technologies, how is the craft of storytelling transforming for you?

Tools change all the time, but the essence remains the same: someone has something to tell. I love that a story today can be born in the most unexpected places —a voice note, a fleeting video, a small anecdote— and then unfold across multiple platforms. Technology has opened narrative possibilities that were previously unimaginable and has democratized many stages of the creative process.

But there’s also a side of it that worries me. I feel that digital culture, in its obsession with speed and over-information, has pushed imagination aside. Many films —not just online content— seem to be fulfilling the role of informing rather than telling a story.

And going back to what I said earlier about darkness: that darkness we need in order to imagine, to fill in the gaps, to project ourselves into what we see… today it’s almost been expelled from the room. Screens multiply and shine so brightly that imagination has fallen out of the bed, hit its head hard on the floor. And there it lies, half-anesthetized, knocked out by the impact. I hope it wakes up soon — because without imagination, technology is nothing more than a glowing pacifier.

How vital are film festivals in the current landscape for independent creators looking to reach global audiences?

They are essential. For an independent filmmaker, a festival is much more than a showcase: it’s a place where films find allies, conversation, and a way of existing outside the algorithm. In a world saturated with content, festival curation remains a sensitive filter that prevents works from getting lost in the noise.

The only thing I dislike about the festival universe —and fortunately it happens only in a small fraction— is when it indirectly conditions creation. Some directors fall into the trap of making films “for festivals,” just as others make films “for platforms.” In the same way there’s a formula for entertainment, there’s also a formula for “festival cinema”. And when a film is born already tailored to a formula —any formula— it loses something essential: it's need to exist.

How would you define the current moment in the Argentinian film industry — its strengths and its vulnerabilities?

The greatest strength is the talent: Argentina has an extraordinary community of technicians, actors and directors capable of making top-level cinema even under difficult conditions. That creative resilience is almost part of our identity. The vulnerability, as always, is economic instability, which directly affects the production, job continuity and long-term planning.

Unfortunately, Argentina is not immune to the binary logic that dominates the world today. It’s true that the National Film Institute needed to be rethought for a long time, to become more efficient and to strengthen the local industry. But the current government, instead of demonstrating that it’s entirely possible to work in that direction, has chosen to partially defund the Institute under the idea that filmmaking is merely a private activity. That perspective completely ignores how the audiovisual industry actually functions in any developed country that has achieved strong results through consistent public policy.

For the past fifteen years I’ve been meeting with governments from across the political spectrum, and unfortunately none of them have truly understood —I suppose— the enormous potential of Argentine cinema. Far from generating losses, it can generate foreign income and employment for the country. We are an industry capable of sustaining itself and growing, but only if there is clear, stable and professional policy behind it.

Argentina’s economic and political shifts often influence cultural production. What changes have you observed most directly in filmmaking practices?

The most obvious change is that fewer films are being made, and there’s now a huge dependence on OTT financing. And although there are beautiful exceptions, that dependence inevitably affects the content, which —as everyone knows— is shaped by the data these large platforms analyze constantly. In other words, even before shooting begins, there is already a kind of statistical corset that conditions both narrative and aesthetic decisions. To make matters worse, many of the Argentine productions made for OTTs are now being shot in Uruguay, a country that offers interesting tax incentives.

On the other hand, what I also see is an extraordinary ability to adapt. Every crisis forces us to rethink how to film: faster, lighter, more creatively. Ingenious solutions appear, but so does a great deal of precariousness. And the paradox is that this tension often leads to more personal and daring visions. The problem is when urgency becomes the norm, because then creativity no longer comes from desire or artistic necessity, but from sheer survival.

Argentina is known for its strong auteur tradition. Do you feel this identity is still thriving within today’s younger filmmakers?

Yes, absolutely. I see it very clearly. Each generation tends to think the next one is more domesticated, but when you look closely, you discover the opposite: there’s a whole group of young directors who keep making films with enormous conviction, with that mix of stubbornness and faith you need to get a movie made in Argentina.

Formats change, schedules change, budgets change… but the impulse is the same. That need to tell a story because it won’t let you sleep. And that, ultimately, is what defines an auteur. Not style, not themes, not belonging to a movement — but the need. The filmmaker who makes films because they simply cannot not make them.

And I’ll add something else: even in a context where platforms seem to push everything toward a certain homogeneity, young filmmakers are finding ways to smuggle their personal vision into the system. There’s always a twist, a detail, a tone that’s impossible to imagine coming from an algorithm. That’s the wonderful part: when the author slips through the crevices. And in Argentina, crevices are never in short supply.

What structural support do emerging filmmakers in Argentina most urgently need?

The most urgent need is stability: clear rules and policies that don’t change all the time. Without continuity, it’s impossible to plan a film. We also need to diversify funding sources; everything can’t depend on the INCAA (Argentina’s National Film Institute) or, on the other side, on a single platform. We need an ecosystem where regional funds, co-productions and private incentives can coexist.

With a stable framework and a living exhibition circuit, a new generation can grow without every film having to be a feat of survival.

How has the international perception of Argentinian cinema evolved during your career?

Today, Argentine cinema is seen as serious, mature, and surprisingly diverse. We’re no longer boxed into the idea of “social cinema,” as we were years ago. Abroad, people recognize our ability to create universal stories from very specific realities, and they value that blend of humor, melancholy, and narrative risk that has become such a distinctive part of our voice.

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Finally — what advice would you give to young directors who are striving to make their first film against all odds?

They shouldn’t wait for ideal conditions — they don’t exist. They should look for a story they truly need to tell, even if it’s small. And they should surround themselves with people who believe in them, even if it’s just three.

Films are born that way: out of a need, a small human group, and a bit of beautiful recklessness. Everything else you learn by shooting.

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And the upcoming project..

I already have a first draft of the script for my next project. It will be my second feature film, although unlike my debut, this time I wrote the script myself, and the story is based on a rather unusual real event.

As often happens to me, the form and the tone are completely different from my previous work. In this case, I’m exploring a combination that excites me a lot: an absurd sense of humor that coexists with narrative elements from a thriller. I’m genuinely enthusiastic about it, talking with different producers and looking for the best path toward getting it financed as soon as possible.