Argentina’s Pez Cine and Lechiguana Films are linking to Uruguay’s El Cielo Cine and Spain’s Imval Producciones to produce “The Friends of My Parents,” Romina Tamburello’s first solo feature which bids fair to repeat the upbeat critics¡ reaction and audience success of “Vera and the Pleasure of Others,” acquired for world sales by M-Appeal.
Also penned by playwright, novelist and filmmaker Tamburello, “The Friends of My Parents” is being brought to market at this week’s Malaga Festival MAFF co-production forum before segueing to the Guadalajara Co-Production Meeting in April.
An “intimate, autobiographical comedy,” Tamburello told Variety, “The Friends of My Parents” turns on Cecilia, 36, separating quietly, who is asked by her parents to help them find “reliable” swinger clubs.
Battling multiple prejudices, she begins visiting places and discovers “a universe of diverse sexualities, nurturing relationships, and unexpected friendships” – in sharp contrast to her own emotional breakdown, the synopsis adds.
Cecilia will be played by Camila Peralta, nominated for best actress and best new actress for “Cambio, Cambio” and best actress for “Clara se pierde en el bosque” at the Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards and nominated for best new actress for “Puan” by Argentina’s Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences – all in 2024.
She will be joined by Alejandra Flechner, an Argentinean Academy Award supporting actress winner for her performance in “Argentina, 1985” and by Luis Ziembrowski, a star of Demián Rugna’s international breakout “When Evil Lurks.”
“My Parents’ Friends” centers on a territory rarely explored by cinema: desire in old age. Based on my parents’ real-life experience as swingers after their cancer diagnosis, the film confronts generational prejudices with humor and tenderness, challenging the place of aging bodies on screen as living, erotic, and complex entities,” said Tamburello.
According to producer Santiago King at Pez Cine, the film “stages one of cinema’s last great taboos: sexuality in old age. Through humor and emotional honesty, it portrays bodies marked by time as territories of desire, not decline,” King added. “This combination of autobiographical intimacy and contemporary perspective gives it a strong auteurist identity and clear international appeal.”
Under development from 2024 at Pez Cine, which has backed Tamburello’s work since 2017, “The Friends of My Parents” adapts the same-titled novel by Tamburello, published in 2024 by Penguin Random House Argentina.
The project, currently undergoing a rewriting process with script doctor Yolanda Barrasa, has won development awards at Argentina’s Espacio Santafesino, Entre Ríos Film Festival (FICER), and Bariloche Audiovisual Festival (FAB). Winner of a Second Feature Film Competition at the INCAA Argentine film-TV agency, “The Friends of My Parents” was selected for the 3rd Extremadura Film Residency, which sparked the co-production with Imval.
“The Friends of My Parents” continues the liberal sex positive line of “Vera and the Pleasure of Others,” written and directed by Tamburello and Federico Actis (“The Architecture of Crime”).
Produced by Pez Cine, it turns on Vera, 17, who rents out an empty apartment to teens looking to have sex and spying on them as she begins to explore her own sexual pleasures, on her own and then with clients. Celebrating its world premiere at the 2023 Tallinn Back Nights Film Festival, it won best direction in the Argentine Competition at the 2023 Mar del Plata Festival, the Critics’ Award at the 2024 D’A Film Festival Barcelona in Spain and the Audience Award at that year’s Vancouver Intl. Film Festival.
A decided crowdpleaser, “Vera” is available on the streaming service of Argentine cable operator Flow where it has played in its Top 10 of most-watched films and series.
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