ISABELLA [narrative]

Mariel (María Villar) longs to play the role of Isabella in a local theater troupe's production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, but money problems prevent her from preparing for the audition. She thinks of asking her brother for financial help, but is worried about being too direct. Her solution is to ask her brother's girlfriend, Luciana (Agustina Muñoz), also an actress and a more self-assured one, to convince her brother to give her the money. Luciana agrees on the condition that Mariel will not abandon her acting and continue to prepare for the part of Isabella.

The latest in Matías Piñeiro's series of films inspired by the women of Shakespeare's comedies is his most structurally daring and visually stunning work to date. Through their rich and layered performances, Muñoz and Villar demonstrate a profound intimacy formed over more than a decade of collaboration with their director. Isabella is a film about the ongoing battle between doubt and ambition that never discounts the possibility of a new beginning.

2021  Literature  Women's Studies  Narrative Films  Cinema Studies 

Winner - Special Jury Mention - Berlin Film Festival

Official Selection - The New York Film Festival

Critic's Pick!  "Isabella finds [Piñeiro] expanding his formal ambition."

- Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times

"A sort of cinematic music... Piñeiro fuses performance and daily life into a quietly mighty architecture of psychological complexity."

-Richard Brody, The New Yorker

"Exquisitely pleasurable."

-Leo Goldsmith, The Brooklyn Rail

"As fresh as the breeze."

-Stuart Klawans, The Nation

"Another showcase for the screen presence of its two leads, Piñeiro regulars María Villar and Agustina Muñoz, [who] represent individual panels in a grander work of art that has been unfolding for much of the 2010s."

Daniel Fairfax, Senses of Cinema

"Isabella seems like an ending and a beginning of something truly and unquestionably special."

-Joshua Brunsting, Criterion Cast