Wild Tales

Damián Szifron's Wild Tales (Spanish: Relatos salvajes) competed for the Palme d'Or at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in May 2014 and was selected as Argentina's submission for the 87th Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category, earning a nomination at the February 2015 ceremony. At the 2015 Goya Awards (the Spanish national film prize) the film was nominated in ten categories — the highest tally for an Argentine production in Goya history — and won Best Adapted Screenplay.

The film is structured as six standalone short films connected only by thematic register; the production was a Spanish-Argentine co-production with Pedro Almodóvar's El Deseo as the principal Spanish co-producer. Almodóvar has been outspoken in interviews about championing the project after seeing Szifron's earlier work and using El Deseo's market access to expand the film's international visibility. The six segments were shot across approximately ninety days in Argentina with deliberately distinct visual registers for each episode.

The cast across the six segments is one of the most extensive ensembles in any Argentine production: Ricardo Darín (the most prominent Argentine leading man of his generation), Leonardo Sbaraglia, Érica Rivas, Oscar Martínez, Rita Cortese, Liliana Ackerman, Julieta Zylberberg, María Marull and many others. Cinematography is by Javier Juliá. The film grossed over $33 million worldwide on a budget of approximately $3.3 million — an extraordinary commercial outcome — and is the highest-grossing Argentine production of all time. Szifron has worked principally in television and Hollywood properties since.