Daniel Burman, icon of the New Argentine Cinema and now one of Argentina’s foremost feature/TV series writer-directors and showrunners, is shooting a new series “So Far So Good” (“El Resto Bien”). Created by Burman, it re-teams him with Daniel Hendler – star of 2004’s “Lost Embrace,” which won Burman a Berlin Jury Grand Prix and Hendler a Silver Bear for actor.
Hendler and Burman will co-direct together all the series’ eight half-hour episodes. Far So Good” is produced by Uruguay H.Q.-ed Cimarrón (“Barrabrava,” “A Ravaging Wind”) and Argentina’s Oficina Burman (“Victoria Small,” “Yosi, the Regretful Spy”), whose latest series, “Maledictions” bowed Sept. 12 on Netflix, hitting its Global non-English Top 10 TV Shows. Both are The Mediapro Studio companies.
Oficina Burman and Cimarrón are producing “So Far So Good” for Flow, the Argentine cable TV, internet and SVOD operator. Flow has acquired distribution rights for Latin America; The Mediapro Studio owns rights to the rest of the world.
Many of Burman’s films are autobiographical, exploring nuanced family relations and questions of identity with a hallmark warm irony, seeking as well an emotional punch.
Currently half way through its shoot in Uruguay and Paraguay, “So Far So Good” has all this in arguably the most autobiographical of Burman’s works.
His alter ego Ariel (Benjamin Vicuña, “Locked Up”), a successful cartoonist is now in seeming danger of emotional burnout as he turns 50, trapped in a world – Burman’s first irony – that he has created himself. Caught in the vortex of a frenzied social life, given the pressing needs of his five children and constant attention required by his parents, already on the verge of physical and emotional collapse, he is told by his doctor that he has a hernia and shouldn’t lift anything weighing more than three kilos.
“This limitation sparks a journey which is comic and around where Ariel has to discover what really worries us in life. Will he be able to recuperate his freedom or be crushed by his own reality?” the synopsis ends by asking.
Ariel’s crisis is of his own making, in more ways than one, Burman told Variety, calling “So Far So Good” a “human dramedy” about “men’s mid-life crises with themselves, that moment of life when you ask: ‘When will there be time for me?’”
He added: “Mid-life men issues haven’t addressed so much in recent years what happens to men with regard to themselves. Or they’re focused in relation to women or partners. What’s been left somewhat aside is men’s crises with themselves.”
Series leads are Vicuña, Violeta Urtizberea (“Las estrellas”), Rita Cortese (‘Wild Tales’) and Martín Seefeld (“Pretenders”). Guest artists take in Andrea Frigerio (“The Distinguished Citizen”), Alejandro Awada (“Yosi, the Repentant Spy”) and Marina Bellati (“Envious”). The series is written by Burman and frequent recent collaborators Ariel Gurevich (‘Transmitzvah’) and Andrés Gelós and Pablo Gelós, (“Maledictions”) as well as Eloy Burman.
Variety chatted to Burman briefly about his new series:
All films and TV series are, to a certain extent autobiographical. “So Far So Good” seems to be perhaps your most obviously autobiographical work to date….
This is conscious. Sometimes you tell stories you need to tell, and at others stories that you need to be told. I was looking for a story to establish a dialog with the moment of life I’m going through, middle-age – I’m 52 – where you’re father to your children and father to your parents. Without a sense of victimization. I created a family, which is marvellous. But the time you have for yourself is the small remainder after being a father and son, and it becomes smaller and smaller.
In the series, Ariel also suffers from a hernia.…
Yes, your body begins to fail and you have a sense you just have some years to do everything you haven’t done. Your body begins to abandon you, but remaining are your responsibilities, a lot of which are self-imposed. Many times we use them to escape from real responsibility, which is taking responsibility for what we are.
Isn’t this a larger masculine trait?
Yes: It’s a specific facet of men: How we’re fascinated in conquering empires, going out to conquer the world, to escape from our own world, our small microcosmos. How we go to our Waterloos to escape confronting our own families. Again, that will be treated without any sense of accusation. I’m not so much deconstructing masculinity as constructing it, because it still hasn’t been constructed.
In “So Far So Good” you’re working with people you’ve worked with before over multiple films. Is that just a coincidence?
It’s not by chance. rather like a party with friends. On the shoot, you can look around and see so many people you want to give a hug to or have a coffee with them. Daniel Hendler is one case. We began working together over 20 years ago with “The Lost Embrace.” I was moved by his becoming a director. He’s slightly younger but also addresses the same middle-age issues. I’ve worked with many of the screenwriters on “Yosi, the Regretful Spy” and “Maledictions.” It’s a very feel-good series, and made to connect, made not only with a male gaze but inviting other viewpoints, those of how our children and parents look at us.
This is your first collaboration with Flow?
Yes, I’m enjoying working with them immensely. They’ve also given me absolute creative freedom. They are the perfect partner for this project. I’ve now worked with Cimarrón on several titles. The Mediapro Studio is rather like a household where you take each project to your cousin, uncle or brother. We really work like a family. Cimarrón is a sister company. I live in Buenos Aires but each time I shoot, I now move to Montevideo. It’s like a second home.
