Argentinian Helmers Fendrik and Puenzo Team for ‘Smoke Men’

If you know your world cinema, more particularly the Argentinean auteur scene, then you’d be familiar with names such as Pablo Fendrik and Lucia Puenzo. Variety reports that this pair of filmmakers will collaborate on “Hombres de humo” (Smoke Men) – a project meant to reach a wider audience than those that went to see either of Fendrik’s previous films (The Mugger and Blood Appears) which I happened to have caught at Cannes in back to back years. Fendrik will direct and co-write the thriller with Puenzo of XXY fame. Puenzo is also wearing the producing hat and looking to secure funding locally and from Euro funds.

Set in a city outside Buenos Aires, Hombres de humo begins with a man who’s involved in Argentina’s worst-ever multiple pileup, and seizes the opportunity to murder the woman in the passenger seat. Film then shuttles between the past and the future as a femme doctor begins to have suspicions about the woman’s death. The film is being pitched like a Hitchcock thriller, but before setting out on this project, Fendrik will start lensing Cannes supported The Ardor early next year.