One of Argentina’s new filmmaking talents to watch, Sundance Institute Latin Fellowship recipient Ana Bovino has just received private funding for her documentary project “The Nights” (“Las noches”) from heavyweight doc player Jane Ray, founder of Cat Flap Media and consultant artistic director of UK funding body The Whickers.
Shopped at various co-production markets including Chile’s Conecta 2025 where it won the Cannes Docs Award and a ticket for this year’s Cannes Docs Spotlight, Bovino’s film debut is now competing for the €15,000 ($17,200) Last Push Award at the ECAM Forum co-production market in Madrid, running over June 9-11.
Born out of Bovino’s wish to reimagine the Middle Eastern folktales “One Thousand and One Nights” and Sheherazade’s quest to free women from violence through storytelling, “The Nights” is a portrait of La Pichi, a larger-than-life woman living on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, who turns her life into stories, night after night. “Born in a territory and body on the margins, she uses humor, imagination, and irreverence to reclaim her voice and identity,” reads the logline.
Asked how she found La Pichi, Bovino said she came to her in 2020, as part of an open casting for “The Nights” which was initially meant to be a filmed theatre play with a diverse range of amateur actors as narrators “à la Sheherazade.”
“From the very outset, La Pichi blew us away with her gift as a storyteller and ability to narrate her own story, often with poetry and touches of magic. She was our Sheherazade! I quickly left my stage-to-film idea – although the play did happen, and ended up with La Pichi as main protagonist of ‘The Nights.’”
For Bovino, La Pichi’s striking personality, storytelling talent, dignity, but also her eye-catching sexy curves and 120kg made her a natural-born central character. “She does define herself has being fat; it’s her political identity,” said Bovino who built the narrative arc as “a cinematic book, tracing La Pichi’s journey, from imposed shame to pride, pleasure and the possibility of being loved, not in spite of her body but because of her body.”
Quizzed about her decision to board the film, Fay told Variety she was literally “blown away” by the rough cut of “The Nights” which was showcased at the Conecta doc market 2025 in Chile.
“Surely, there is not a woman in the world, and probably a fair few men, who do not pause at the mirror, suck in their cheeks or their tummy and secretly wish they were more svelte,” she quipped. “I knew that a documentary with a challenging yet deeply compassionate focus on a super-curvaceous woman would resonate internationally.”
“Jeannie Finley’s hugely popular and critically acclaimed ‘Your Fat Friend’ (2023) had taught us that,” Fay conferred, “but ‘The Nights’ is so much more. The main character La Pichi is a star; a completely captivating Scheherazade, luring us in across ‘A Thousand and One Nights’ through her world, the back streets of Buenos Aires as she weaves her stories in order to survive. By turns laugh out loud funny, then searingly poignant, La Pichi brings light, warmth, and the promise of hot sex to the darkest night.”
“The decision to invest was therefore easy,” Fay said, “especially as I could sense that the director and producer Natalia de La Vega had a very strong mutually supportive relationship which makes them an effective and well organised core team who are refreshingly receptive to feedback.”
De la Vega of Argentine’s Navega Cine, who produces with Bovino, said obtaining the support from Fay – now a consultant producer on the project, was crucial for picture lock. “We are extremely proud of this film. We believe in Argentinian cinema, although it’s been very tough financially and emotionally to make it,” De la Vega told Variety.
“The entire audiovisual industry in Argentina and its ecosystem are being dismantled by the current government, which is why we need foreign investors to chip in,” she added. “Any extra support will be more than welcome,” said the producer, eager to meet potential distributors, sales agents and festival programmers at ECAM Forum.