Netflix has announced that Damian Szifron’s new film El sobrino (The nephew), starring Leonardo Sbaraglia, began production on Monday.

Written and directed by Szifron and produced by K&S Films (The Eternaut), the film — which is shooting in Ramos Mejía, Buenos Aires — is described as a dramedy set in the world of classical music.

The plot revolves around an internationally renowned pianist at the peak of his career who sees his world shaken after discovering that his nine-year-old nephew possesses a musical talent that could surpass his own.

The cast features Leonardo Sbaraglia (known for Argentine films like Burnt Money and Wild Tales), Rita Cortese, Luisana Lopilato, and Valeria Lois, introducing Luan Adler Fuks. Vincent Macaigne and legendary Italian actor Franco Nero will also make appearances. 

“Starting a shoot is an intense experience. It marks the moment when a significant body of visual and narrative ideas — long discussed with teams of artists and collaborators — cross the threshold of imagination and start turning into concrete images and sounds,” Szifrón stated in a press release. 

This is Szifron and Sbaraglia’s new collaboration following the director’s Oscar-nominated Wild Tales, which also featured Rita Cortese.

“Leo is at an incredible moment in his acting career: lucid, deep, mature, and vital,” said the director, who also highlighted the opportunity to collaborate with Nero, whom he called his “childhood idol.” 

‘Los Simuladores,’ still on standby

The long-awaited film version of Szuifron’s cult Argentine TV series Los Simuladores is still on standby due to production delays.

Premiered in 2002, Los Simuladores was a hit TV show created by Damián Szifron that ran for two seasons. It featured Diego Peretti, Federico D’Elía, Martín Seefeld, and Alejandro Fiore as a group of men who orchestrate elaborate real-life situations to help out strangers in need by deceiving or influencing the people causing their problems.

In the aftermath of Argentina’s 2001 social and economic crisis, the show about people in dire need finding solutions to their problems became a big hit. The simulators’ clients were mostly regular people, including a loan shark’s victim and a supermarket owner neglected by his insurance company. The group’s overall goal was always to serve justice wherever legal routes proved ineffective.

In addition to its popularity, Los Simuladores boosted the career of its director. Szifron went on to direct the films The Bottom of the Sea and On Probation (also starring Peretti) and the TV show Hermanos & Detectives. 

He made the jump to Hollywood after getting an Oscar nomination in 2014 for his second film Wild Tales, which also won a BAFTA award. 

Szifron’s first film in English, Misanthrope, was released in 2023 with production by US company FilmNation and starred Shailene Woodley and Ben Mendelsohn

Photo credit: Marcos Ludevid / Netflix