“Marriages and something else”, “The unfaithful”, “of flesh we are”, “Orange and a half”, “Cola Brigade”, “The man of my life”, “The Benvenuto family” and “married to children.” Indelible postcards of the viewer’s memory, bastions that contributed over four decades to cement the popularity of Guillermo Francella. The theatrical spectator treasures his leaders in works such as “the producers”, “The dinner of the fools” and “two rogues scoundrels”, among others. Cinephil can build a capricious filmography between “the clan”, “the secret of his eyes” and “the theft of the century”, which shows the versatility of this interpreter.
On this occasion cinema serves as an expressive vehicle for Francella’s meeting with news. The trio behind the winning formula of “The Manager” is reunited to “Homo Argentum”a relentless portrait, from humor and social satire, about the essence of Argentine and its most controversial aspects. Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat distribute the challenge of building 16 different characters, in a series of microretelats that put the magnifying glass on a society immersed in contradictions, misery, selfishness, mischief, fueled and thirst for revenge.
A film that bets to fight “Mazel Tov” by Adrián to Suar the title of being the most convening Argentine production in cinemas in this 2025.
News: “Homo Argentum” has 16 stories starring you. Is your most personal project to date?
Guillermo Francella: Everyone has been personal, but this is a very big challenge and I am happy to have carried out, because now that I see that mixture of humor with debate and social criticism is exactly what I wanted to convey.
News: What expectation with respect to the public? Because there is a great tradition of episodic programs such as “Operation haha”, “Marriages and something else” or “I put Francella”, but today the kids are with Tik Tok …
Francella: Do you know what I feel? That it is Tiktokera (laughs) you saw that they with this immediacy that need to be looking at the cell phone … It seems to me that they are going to hook, each story generates a reflection, a dilemma poses. There is something that they are telling you, beyond that you can have fun, that moves you, things happen to you with what you are seeing and this so fast that the boys need is very plausible with the format of the movie. It is a different idea without being new and there is something punctual, you will not see it on platforms, you have to go to the movies. I think that episodic nature can work … I hope! (Smile).
News: Can we say that you advanced by putting your body and beat AI? Because one of the main debates in the world of cinema was the fear that they would use the image of an actor to make different characters. How is time to compose so many roles in such short stories?
Francella: It can be the artificial intelligence! (He laughs) Look, there were two previous works, the first took me a month and consisted of making the characterizations very plausible, that pass the camera test, avoid any alteration that subtracts credibility to each transformation. There are very birdded people in Argentina who work with a very high level, I did not know the mastery they have to form each aesthetics and carry it perfectly. That month was very hard. And then there was a very interesting process that consisted of delving into the interpretation.
News: And manage to transcend the aesthetic composition, right?
Francella: Exactly, it is a very necessary moment to work in every way, because the challenge was not only the characterization but the bodily, the postural, the voice, look for a different palette, that a heterogeneity is seen, that is palpable. Getting in each character, covered by an aesthetic transformation where I saw me and did not recognize me, helped me a lot from the interpretive. The trial process, working a lot with Cohn and Duprat and giving the punch to each story took a considerable time. It was necessary to film with some chronology. I never had to return to a previous character and that helped me.
News: In the episode “The Eternal Child”, with Migue Granados, the spirit of the comic is rescued a bit, it seemed to me that this structure of the approach, knot and outcome could be the three squares of a strip like the ones we followed in the background of the newspaper. Do you see it that way?
Francella: It is true, it is. That vignette is a my idea that was designed to be a film, several were raised as possible feature films that we later compress in this way. The story of “The Eternal Child” was told to Gastón and Mariano, it is an idea that has always mobilized me for years, it is a very recurrent theme, that of the children who do not leave the family home. They took it, liked and now they can see her.
News: Do you think “Homo Argentum” dialogues with other emblematic films of Argentine cinema such as “wild stories” or with the portrait of the microcenter of “new queens”?
Francella: (A silence is made, he thinks) No. I really don’t think it was the intention of Cohn and Duprat dialogue with those films. In “wild stories” there was a conductive thread that was violence, in “Homo Argentum” in any case we talked about our gene, how we are. Generous, families, chantas, there is something of us that pivot in each vignette, I do not see that it has to do with the Szifrón movie. Perhaps that and the “nine queens” should be answered by Mariano and Gastón, many things are in their heads.
News: I saw him with Mario Pergolini in “Another lost day,” there he said that you were not a great journalist, but knew how to ask. That phrase caught my attention, what is knowing how to ask?
Francella: I always loved journalism always loved oral journalism, because there is some interpretation, acting. When I finished high school, all I liked was to act but I was not very clear if I was going to be able to live on that and felt that journalism was a good option. In the oral I felt trained so that my questions were original, I liked to investigate the interlocutor in front of me, it seemed to me that I could contribute ideas, I think I had a good notion in that sense.
News: The second story of “Homo Argentum” is called “A night of luck.” When “the secret of your eyes” won the Oscar for you was a night of luck?
Francella: Without a doubt, beautiful night. Look that over almost a century we have been distinguished only twice with the Oscar in Argentina, it has been very, very important to be in that stage next to Almodóvar, Tarantino and my dear Juan Campanella that gave me the wonderful opportunity to do that Pablo Sandoval. It was an extraordinary trampoline for there to be a vote of greater confidence in all the great Argentine directors, who always talked about me, but they did not summon me. I’ve been filming with very heterogeneous directors for 20 years, owners of absolutely different looks.
News: You met popularity since the mid -80s, in recent decades thanks to the cinema, do you feel that you acquired a well -deserved prestige?
Francella: Of course, it can be. I always loved being a popular artist, my whole life. In an era there was something against that, it was the popular against the prestigious, today I feel that everything is more united. It is a distinction for me to achieve both, I do not know if it was a goal set, but I wanted to travel different content and it was. From April 2026 I will make “from the garden” in theater, I am very excited about that project that was a recurring dream, I always had the fantasy of making the theatrical version of that great film with Peter Sellers.
News: At this stage of life, what things do “beautiful tomorrow, right”?
Francella: I feel very full on a personal and professional level, I am full of a lot of love, I have the best children I dreamed, a beautiful family, a beloved brother, friends, health, living what I am passionate about. There are a lot of things that make me happy.
