Argentine filmmaker Gastón Solnicki is cooking up his latest feature, “The Souffleur,” which he’ll be presenting during the Venice Gap-Financing Market, which runs Aug. 30 – Sep. 1.
The film tells the story of Lucius Glantz, an American who’s managed the same international hotel in Vienna for 30 years. When he discovers one day that the venerable building is slated to be sold and demolished, he embarks on a quest to stop its destruction, pitting him against a cocky Argentine realtor. As the conflict between them escalates, the hotel’s trademark soufflé mysteriously stops rising, forcing Glantz to confront the prospect of the end of all he holds dear.
Directed by Solnicki off a script he co-wrote with Julia Niemann, “The Souffleur” is produced by Gabriele Kranzelbinder and Eugenio Fernández Abril for Vienna-based Little Magnet Films, Primo and Solnicki’s Argentine production company Filmy Wiktora. The director tells Variety that the idea for the film stemmed from a “curious, failed experience” at a restaurant in Buenos Aires, when a soufflé was “forced on me in a very sad fashion.” It was something like a betrayal for Solnicki, who studied cooking in his youth and was “trained in this very military French tradition.
” Describing the “torture” of preparing the iconic baked dish, he says: “It’s not something that you just follow a recipe, and it happens. It’s really an act of love and an..
.act of faith.” Drawing on elements of sur.