Metegol is her first job in the animation world, the most expensive film in Argentine history ($20 million). Have you been able to leave your touch within such a large production and structure?

Yes, I have been fully respected as a director, and producers and investors have not put their hands on anything more than in other films, they have given me freedom. Moreover, paradoxically, although I do not control many roles in animation, I feel that it is the film with my most obvious touch, because I have had to choose everything: I can't choose the color of the actor Ricardo Darín's eyes, but I can choose the color of the cartoon characters. This time I've had to make a lot more decisions than in another movie.

In your movies there are no evil or good, but characters with contradictions that, depending on the moment, can have heroic and malignant attitudes.

Yes, I like characters with doubts, because the human being is complex. I'm not interested in those heroes who don't have temptations, because I think it has more value than the one who, at any given moment, is able to fall into temptations and overcome them, has no weakness. Given the same momentum, depending on each person’s situation and conditions, we sometimes fall into temptation and others do not. I like to look at those weaknesses; if we overcome them, they will make us stronger, if we do not overcome them, weaker, but, after all, more human.

With the passage of life and time, illusions and early dreams are breaking the characters in your filmography. It sounds like melancholy.

I think there's an inertia in life: in fact, if we stay still, we leave ourselves still, we tend not to move from that place, and decay is the most natural thing, we're afraid to grab certain things, until something happens that takes you out of that inertia and moves you. Many people stay in the same place all their lives. In my movies, the characters are at that point, standing in a place, and something happens and they're forced to deal with the conflict. It's a common theme, both in life and in movies: Why do we tell this story at this point? Even in life, inertia leads us to stay in the same place of work, until something happens; it is rare that on a normal day, without more, we decide to change our lives.

And in the end, you always leave the door open, as if you wanted to say, "It's never too late."

Because I think so, there is always the possibility of resuming and reinventing ourselves. Well, for me it's too late to start doing ballet, but nothing stops me putting on the t-shirts, taking the counter and having fun, ha, ha. The ability to constantly reinvent oneself is seen in many people, especially happy people.

Love relationships are the basis of your movies, but it's a love that's far from idealized romantic love.

Like iron, love is built to hamstring, overcoming difficulties. They end the typical romantic comedies at the moment when problems start for the couple, in the first kiss, and from there I like to go deeper. The most enduring relationship I've ever had in my life is with my wife, and ours is not the relationship of romantic comedies: we're fine, but we've worked every day, figuring out ways to keep love alive, and it's a nice job, but it's a job.

So, sentimental movies don't have to be stupid and dumb, does gender accept depth?

There are people who think that my movies are stupid and stupid, but I think they're pretty real, I always take references to life and all the cases that you see in my work, not being autobiographical, they're biographical, they're based on reality. In a romantic comedy there may be conflict between a dirty guy or living with his parents, eccentricities; in mine it may be the egoism or boredom of a couple, things that can happen at all times and to everyone. I find it interesting to delve into this, if you do it better with humor, and if you can explain how that couple has overcome the difficulties and at the end show the light, even better.

He mentioned humor, his characters are able to make humor even in the most cruel moments, but often it is a bittersweet humor, or a very critical humor, which reminds me of Quino, the author of Mafalda, perhaps because they are both Argentinians...

The point is that Quino and I have had the same effects: Living in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is a kind of funnel, where Jewish humor and Italian come together and strengthen themselves, and we are able to laugh at the situations in which almost everyone wears, that's life in Buenos Aires. However, for me humor is not a resource to escape the situation and avoid the problem; when you laugh at the problem, you do it, you destroy it, you leave it at your level and, therefore, you make it a problem that you can defeat, so I live it. If you treat the problem with a lot of fear and seriousness, you treat it as a bigger problem than you, a problem you can't deal with.

As for problems, loneliness and old age are very present in his filmography. Are you afraid?

Stop. Specifically, I am afraid of the loneliness of old age, that is my greatest fear, more fear than death. It gives me a lot of sadness to be an old lonely. I do everything I do every day not to be alone in old age.

Other recurring themes in your life: authorship, corruption, class struggle… And in the context, the social and historical reality of Argentina.

I'm not so afraid of them, I fight against them more, but it's a struggle that's always going to be, somehow they're the engine of the world, and we'll have to keep fighting every day. It is like wanting a life without problems, that is reflected in The bride's son, but it is impossible, there is no life without problems. Your parents age and die, and so do you, and the key is to recognize it, but without falling into defeat, fighting, because life is a struggle.

Not only in film, you're a committed person in real life, but also politically. You are one of the signatories of the Manifesto for a global democracy, for a fairer world. And last January, when Ricardo Darín accused the Kirchner of getting rich, he supported the actress. They're your words back then. “If you criticize it, they will slaughter you so that no one else will be cheered.”

I am standing outside the political parties, but there are causes that deserve to put my face on. And I keep what I said: we are not allowed to think outside the established order, but I like to talk about Argentina's problems with the Argentine media, because if not, it seems that I take advantage of it to throw away the dirty rags from home. Anyway, and I don't just mean Argentina, who you think is different, they'll put a crazy label on it, or they'll tell you that you're the adversary for democracy. The pressure is high.

I was referring to Darín, the great protagonist of your work. He has also collaborated with Soledad Villamil or Eduardo Blanco. Do you have a fetish actor?

It's not a matter of fetishism, but I have a special deal with them and with other actors. And that exchange has three pillars: I have friends, I can talk to them about life and anything; on the other hand, they are professionals, they have discipline, they treat the whole team with respect and, in my case, they have humor. I'm looking to work with people of three characteristics, both in front of and behind the camera.

Your films have been well criticized and welcomed, but you have once denounced critics who mistreat film without making film.

Don't think that criticism affects me so much, but I've never learned from the people who speak evil of the other. I mean, although I don't like a particular artist, for someone to talk optimistically about their work and discover some interesting features, they can make me watch the film with other eyes, but despite reading a bad critique about a piece I like, I'll like it later. So, I don't really understand the sense of bad criticism, I think all the criticisms should be good, ha, ha. Some critic has said, “The bride’s son is nothing funny”, but then I got into the movie theater and I’ve seen the audience laugh at the movie… He wouldn’t have thought it funny, and it’s legitimate, but more than opinion, sometimes they behave like it’s total and indisputable. In addition, here in Argentina it is like a soap opera, we all know each other and criticism has nothing to do with movies, it has to do with people… But I try not to get into that game and give it public importance, because our job is to communicate, and that communication is what I'm looking for in cinema.

The criticisms relate to the comparison between intellectual and commercial cinema, the independent and the industrial.

In Argentina, in at least 99% of cases, the film is directed by the director, paid for by himself or the most powerful television. Therefore, comparing independent and industrial cinema makes no sense. And as for author cinema vs. commercial cinema, I remember that when I was young there was no such dichotomy: nobody asked if The Godfather or Taxi Driver were commercial. I'd like to know if film changed when critics began to talk about this dichotomy, or the other way around, but it's true that today we have, on the one hand, completely commercial Hollywood cinema (with repetitive scripts, with visibility) and on the other, the so-called author film, the festival film, usually very boring for me (contemplative, contemptuous of the script). The two extremes are condemned and the possibility of making a synthesis between them is lost: a good script, a good director, a work that will stimulate you visually and a story that will attract you. We're losing that, and that's why I'm almost not going to the movies. To go to the movies today, I have to decide between the superheroes The Avengers and the movie Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and I'm not drawn to either.

You said: “A film is a way to know oneself.” Finally, the topic question is Argentina: Is film a means of self-analysis?

Ja, ja, ja, ja, what clichés the Argentinians, but I have never been psychoanalyzed, I am a pariah in Argentina. I believe more in psychology than in psychoanalysis, and it's true that there's an existential interest behind my film, that making movies helps me a lot to understand my relationship with the issues I touch and to answer questions. Now, for example, I want to talk about death in the next movie. I've been around this topic for three years, reading, thinking, talking… Not about someone who is going to die, but about that moment in life when you realize you're ever going to die. I have a son of 47 and 6 years old and you start moving your head when I'm not me, what? Of course I'm going to treat it with humor, because I've told you that the enemy is a means to reduce it to my size, and are there enemies bigger than death?