Agora Film PR

Argentina / Brazil / Mexico / France | 2026 | 84′ | Color

Festivals:
Locarno Film Festival (Concorso Cineasti del Presente | Special Mention recipient)

About the film:
In the near future, during a relentless summer break and with a solar eclipse approaching, 12-year-old Bego struggles to find her place within her family and among girls her age. As the moon seems to eclipse the animals and people around her, she meets REN__, an online friend, who introduces her to “shifting” – a practice where teens believe they can enter other realities through lucid dreaming.

Director’s Statement:
Los días libres explores themes that I have been drawn to throughout my career, such as horror, female identity, our relationship with technology and the virtual world, and the limits of cinematic language.
This film is very personal to me. The internet was deeply formative in my life: it was where I met friends when I couldn’t find them in the real world, where I pirated music and films that otherwise would never have been within my reach in my country. It was also a refuge where I began to understand who I was and who I wanted to be. In many ways, the internet taught me how to dream.
This film is an open love letter to that internet—the one that no longer quite exists, the one that is changing. To its hidden corners that not everyone can see. A wink, a secret, to those who, like me, do not always belong. A refuge for those who don’t quite fit in and who, like me, needed cinema, the internet, something to hold on to and believe in.

About the director:
Lucila Mariani (1995) is an Argentine director, screenwriter, programmer, and editor who studied at the Universidad del Cine (FUC). Her short films have been screened at festivals around the world, including IFFR, Locarno, BFI, and both MoMA and Lincoln Center in New York (New Directors/New Films), among many others. In Argentina, her work has been screened at BAFICI and the Mar del Plata International Film Festival.
Her first feature film, Los días libres, will have its World Premiere at the Locarno Film Festival this year. During its development, it was selected for labs and markets including La Fabrique Cinéma at the Cannes Film Festival (2023) and the San Sebastián Co-Production Forum (where it won the Arte Kino Prize, 2023). It was supported by Ibermedia, INCAA and ANCINE. Laguna Pepsi is her second feature film in early-stage development.
Filmography:
2026: Los días libres
2025: Quisiera no sentir todo este ruido
2022: Luna que se quiebra sobre la tiniebla de mi soledad
2019: Resonancias
2018: Wekwaind

Press Coverage:
– Locarno Player ‘The Days Off,’ Lucila Mariani’s Dreamlike Argentine Debut, Boarded by Inwave Films (EXCLUSIVE / Variety)
– ‘The Days Off’ Is a “Love Letter to That Internet That No Longer Quite Exists” (Locarno Trailer / Hollywood Reporter)
– Sweet dreams are made of this (DMovies)
– A very delicate coming-of-age film in which science fiction, the logic of dreams, and poetic cinema meet. (ICSFilm)
– Impressive debut film. (In Review Online)
– THE DAYS OFF Filmmaker Lucila Mariani Discusses Internet Nostalgia (INTERVIEW / Screen Anarchy)
– Nataliia Serebriakova and Lucila Mariani discuss the Internet as a refuge, unconventional humour, Bertrand Bonello, Catholicism, and much more. (DMovies / Interview)
– The Days Off is an absorptive experience, a reverie. (The People’s Movies)
– An Eerie Coming-of-Age Story of Shifting Selves (Micropsia)
– Imaginar otro mundo para encontrar el propio (Caligari)
– Locarno 2026 – Los Días Libres & As Light as Air (VHS Cut)
– Lucila Mariani debuta en el largometaje con un coming of age que sorprende con una vuelta de tuerca fantástica (Otroscines)
– La película de Mariani logra transmitir la incomodidad con el presente (Desistfilm)
– L’élégant habillage visuel qu’elle compose ici donne en effet aux meilleures scènes du film des airs de merveilleux rêves numériques oubliés à la Jane Schoenbrun. (Le Polyester)