It took Lucía Puenzo (b. 1976), the daughter of Orcar-winner Argentine director Luis Puenzo (La historia oficial, 1985), only one film to make a name of her own. Her impressive debut XXY (2007), a film about intersexuality, won the Critics’ Week Grand Prix at Cannes, and was followed by the thriller El niño pez (2009). Now her third film is released in the UK. Wakolda is the story of a family who meet a German doctor on a road. He is no else than Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. 

Latinolife: Now it’s been over a year since the local release of Wakolda, what feelings and reflections can you share?

Lucía Puenzo: It’s a film I still feel really very close to me. As it happened with XXY, Wakolda’s international journey — which is now taking it to the UK — has been long and very rewarding. In my experience, the audiences also feel very close to the film. In Argentina more than 500 thousand people saw Wakolda in cinemas. This was a big audience for Argentina and what I felt most interesting and surprising was the fact that the audiences were not only older people as we had expected, but there were also many younger adults.

People’s readings of the film were also very diverse: some were interested in the past and in the story of Mengele, others were struck by the relations between past and present — for instance, today’s models of beauty, the dangers of the uses of technologies and medicine —, and others were more concerned with the complicity of civilians with certain political processes and regimes.

LL: Why do you think the themes in your films often produce an immediate effect in the public sphere? Is that something you consciously seek?

LP: That’s really a complete mystery to me. I am also aware that luck always plays an important role in this. Obviously, at the time of making a film or writing a story you don’t know what the reception will be. I could never approach a film thinking of the interest it may create, it would be paralysing. I think my stories mostly come from concerns, sometimes fears, I have in specific moments. I usually discover what a story is about only during the writing process itself, having started without being clear.

Also I think that sometimes when the themes are so strong (like intersexuality in XXY and racism in Wakolda) we risk forgetting that the films are not total discourses about them. They are only small stories that are related to them. But Wakolda is neither a history of Nazism, nor of Mengele. In Wakolda — the novel, on which the film is based — I remember it was ’fear’ that got me started and Mengele was not in it yet: it was the fear of medicine, and by writing or filming about it, I feel I can exorcise those fears in a way. Medicine can cure you and can heal you, and is something upon which we rely very strongly. But it can also be overwhelming, overpowering, with its research, doctors and institutions demanding at times that we rely almost blindly.

LL: So when does then Mengele enters this scenario?

LP: I started to write it as a short story in Bariloche when I was there with my family. I used to spend holidays in the area as a child and still today I visit often. The short story was about a family who meets a German doctor. The novel started to appear slowly from that point. I did know something about Mengele, his experiments, and his time in Patagonia. Then, I started to read and to learn more, I met experts who helped me, learned of Nora Eldoc, and during that process the German doctor became Mengele.

LL: Nature has an enormous power in your stories, why is that?

LP: For me the landscape has always a leading role. It provides the climate to the film and guides the development of the story. For me, cinema as an experience which is not only cognitive, not only reaching our thoughts, but essentially it’s a sensory experience, one which gets to your body and feelings. I remember when I saw Lucrecia Martel’s La ciénaga for the first time. I went to see it in a cinema in Berlin when I was backpacking in Europe. I spent the following six days, although still physically in Germany, teleported into the universe of La ciénaga. Time later, speaking a lot with Lucrecia about the making of her film, she would tell me about the prevalence she gives to sound, to sounds, her work with different layers like direct sound, post production, music, etcetera. Sound and landscapes are the kind of elements that, particularly in cinemas, communicate feelings and ideas in an almost exclusive sensory matter, by getting under your skin and making emotional marks.

LL: Film critics are often critical of the use of metaphors in cinema. In your films, however, there seem to be a decidedly conscious use of them…

LP: I am very conscious that when you use metaphors you walk on the edge because they can be dangerous. I can see the risk and I take it when I think that’ll be positive. Actually in some cases I feel that not using metaphors which are already there in the heart of the story would be quite cowardly. In Wakolda, for instance, there is the dolls factory which is part of the story and is important for the story. I remember when I edited the novel I was also fearful of the reception because I was aware of its risks of a story like this: it has a very heavy use of metaphors in relation to a sensitive subject, the story is almost amoral at times (think of Mengele and the 12-year-old girl Lilith).

On the other hand, I know it is impossible for everyone to agree with your choices and I welcome that. I learn from the criticism. When I make my decisions, though, I also have reasons and can defend them. What I think it’s really good when your films leave no one feeling indifferent because that means it has touched upon important things

LL: How is that…

LP: I believe that sometimes there are themes up in the air, latent, waiting for something to happen. And then an art work, such as a film addresses that matter and it creates immediate debate. There is always mystery as to how and why some works capture what has been floating in that space, and how through a specific, concrete form that work turns, or helps to turn, a discussion in which many have a lot to say. But to me there is always mystery and an important part of luck as to how that happens.

LL: What projects are you working on now?

At the moment I am writing a book of travel stories taking place in different countries, and which will be called En el hotel cápsula (In the Capsule Hotel). I’m also writing another novel, called Los invisibles (The Invisible Ones). In what relates to film, as I’m planning a new film for next year and I keep making short films in the meanwhile, as well as work for a TV series.

To read the review of Wakolda click here