10 · 27 · 17

120 Beats Per Minute was presented with the presence of Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, at the 15th FICM

Gabriel Andrade Espinosa

Actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart presented the 120 Beats Per Minute by French director Robin Campillo at the 15th International Film Festival of Morelia (FICM).

The film unfolds in the early nineties and tells the story of how, while AIDS had claimed countless lives for almost ten years and Act Up-Paris militants multiply their actions to fight general indifference, Nathan, one of its new members, will be startled by Sean, a radical activist that consumes the last of his energy in action.

Robin Campillo is a director born in Morocco in 1962. He studied in Paris at the Institute of Higher Film Studies, where he met Laurent Cantet, with whom he has collaborated since the late 90s as editor and co-writer in the films Time Out (2001), The Class (2008), Foxfire (2012) and L'atelier (2017). His personal work consists of the films The Returned (2004), Eastern Boys (2013) and 120 Beats Per Minute. He has been selected in various festivals, among which are The Cannes Film Festival, The Venice Film Festival and the César Awards, to mention a few.

After the screening, actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, star of the film, had a conversation with the audience. One of the topics that were touched was the preparation and previous documentation he had to realize to understand the character. "Several members of the team were activists of Act Up-Paris: the director, a producer and the screenwriter. So, I had a lot of information first hand. I was also reviewing several very strong documentaries. With fiction, I didn't need much work because what I had seen already was a lot in terms of harshness and realism."

When he touched on the changes before and after playing the character, Sean Dalmazo commented: "It has been a maelstrom of experiences that were unleashed a year ago when the film was presented. I still can't see what has changed in me because the dust hasn't settled enough to see experiences clearly from a distance. What I could say is that although my job as an actor has always been to try to understand the other, now it concerns me more, even with a more political component."

"I feel the film shows the humanity of this group that had been seen for many years as a radical and provocative group. The great value of the film is that it allows us to see inside, to get close to these people, to live as they lived, to be in their brains. That is what is interesting, which allows us to stop judging them by what was said by the media and empathize with their duty as activists, with their courage, and at the same time embody the disease and live it in a very beautiful and loving way," he said. Nahuel before saying goodbye to the audience.

120 Beats Per Minute will be screened again on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 at 20:30 p.m. in Cinépolis Las Americas.