The Mar del Plata film festival announced its full lineup on Monday at the Gaumont Theater, in a ceremony that included a Silver Astor Lifetime Achievement award to Argentine actress Ana María Picchio.

This is the first time the festival will take place under Carlos Pirovan’s leadership of the National Film and Audiovisual Arts Institute (INCAA). Led by Pirovano, INCAA has been the target of a severe austerity plan aimed both at the institution’s own budget as well as its long-established production-funding structure, a move that has sparked severe criticism all across the Argentine film industry as well as from foreign film institutions. 

Festival artistic directors Jorge Stamadianos and Gabriel Lerman revealed the program for the 39th festival, which runs November 21 to 30, and will feature international guests like Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) and actor/director Paz Vega. Both Reitman’s latest films (Saturday Night) and Vega’s directorial debut (Rita) will run in the festival’s main international competition. 

The festival will offer seven official sections: International, Latin American, Argentine, Altered States, and In-Transit / Work in Progress (WIP). The International Competition will feature 12 films, including two from Argentina: Matías Lucchesi’s El casero, starring Paola Barrientos, and Silvina Schnicer’s La quinta.

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The international competition jury is made up of Colombian actress Angie Cepeda, Israeli director Samuel Maoz, Armenia’s Golden Apricot Festival director Karen Avetisyan, Argentine art director Mercedes Alfonsín, and Dominican journalist Rubén Peralta Rigaud.

Previous announcements of the programming revealed the festival will offer screenings of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis as well as several submissions for the best international feature Oscar, such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (Japan), Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero’s Sujo (Mexico), Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Iran), and Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (France), which will open the festival.   

Other program sections include a 50th Anniversary program of three classic Argentine films: 

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson’s Boquitas pintadas (Heartbreak Tango), Héctor Olivera’s

La Patagonia rebelde (Rebellion in Patagonia) and Sergio Renán’s Oscar nominated La tregua (The Truce).

Tribute programs will also be held for Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov — featuring his films The Color of Pomegranates, The Legend of Suram Fortress, and Shadows of the Forgotten Ancestors — and 1930s Japanese director Sadao Yamanaka.

This year, ticket prices have surged from last year’s AR$400 (with a 50% discount for students and senior citizens) to AR$3000 (for the Auditorium Theater) and AR$4000 (for Paseo Aldrey theaters), in a 1000% increase. So far, no discount program has been announced by the organization.

All films are subtitled, and tickets will be available for online purchasing on November 11. Tickets for screenings at the Chauvin Center can be purchased exclusively at the box office of that venue.

The full program and schedule can be found on the festival’s website.