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Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
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Thirteen years after the premiere of Chico and Rita, Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba presented their second project They Shot the Piano Player yesterday in the Official Selection. Despite being an animated film, it mixes fiction with documentary to tell the story of Tenorio Junior, an exceptional Bossa Nova pianist who never achieved the fame of his contemporaries because he disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the first year of the Argentine military dictatorship.
Trueba discovered Tenorio Junior while he was filming in Brazil in 2004. Surprised by how little information there was about him, he began to dig a little and this led him to San Sebastián, where in 2005 the screening of documentary about Vinicius de Moraes gave him the opportunity to get in touch with people who knew Tenorio Junior. After having recorded more than 150 interviews, he then decided to turn it into an animated film. According to Trueba, “a documentary would merely have become a series of talking heads, whereas with animation we have been able to reconstruct the missing pianist interacting with his family or playing in venues he actually performed in that no longer exist”.
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