Continuing this year's spotlighting of films premiering at NYFF52, FilmLinc Daily is rolling out the trailer for Martín Rejtman's Two Shots Fired. The film marks the founding father of New Argentine Cinema's triumphant return to directing after a 10-year hiatus. It is his first fiction feature since 2004's Magic Gloves.
In Two Shots Fired, Rejtman has created an absurdist comedy that kicks off with a teen's attempt at suicide. Variety's Jay Weissberg says that the film's “string of non sequiturs oddly mimics life’s implausibilities.” Rejtman’s goal therefore seems to be drawing attention to life’s random nature—dramatic acts don’t have to have consequences.
In an interview with John Hopewell, Rejtman explained: “I’m interested in the film functioning like a 'narration machine,' where situations flow from one another with a perhaps unconventional cause-effect; but where humor works anchors spectators.”
Two Shots Fired | Trailer | NYFF52
NYFF Official Description
The first feature in a decade by Martín Rejtman (The Magic Gloves), a founding figure of the new Argentine cinema, is an engrossing, digressive comedy with the weight of an existentialist novel. Sixteen-year-old Mariano (Rafael Federman), inexplicably and without warning, shoots himself twice—once in the stomach and once in the head—and improbably survives. As his family strains to protect Mariano from himself, his elder brother (Benjamín Coehlo) pursues a romance with a disaffected girl (Laura Paredes) who works the counter at a fast-food restaurant, his mother (Susana Pampin) impulsively takes off on a trip with a stranger, and Mariano recruits a young woman (Manuela Martelli) to join his medieval wind ensemble. Rejtman tells this story with both compassion and formal daring, pursuing one thread only to abandon it for another. Two Shots Fired is a wry, moving, consistently surprising film about the irrationality of emotions and how they govern our actions at each stage of our lives.
