2001 film by Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll
25 Watts is a 2001 Uruguayan urban comedy drama film directed and written by Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll. The independent film picture stars Daniel Hendler, Jorge Temponi, and Alfonso Tort.[1] The film received a total of ten awards and three additional nominations, including Best Feature Film Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Best First Feature Film Award at the Havana Film Festival, and others.
Plot
The film covers 24 hours in the life of three youths in Montevideo. The story is about three young boys, Leche, Javi and Seba, trying to survive until Sunday. They have a lot of problems regarding studies, girls, and their lives consist mostly of drinking or sleeping or meeting strange people like the crazy delivery boy, a retarded drug addict, and a philosophical counter clerk at a video rental store.
Javi has landed a job driving a sound truck that plays the same radio spot for pasta all day long, while his buddy Leche, who is supposed to be studying for his exams, instead finds himself having sexual fantasies about his tutor, and Seba is waylaid by a handful of small-time dope dealers when all he wants to do is go home and watch the porno movie he's just rented.
Exhibition
The film first previewed at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in the Netherlands on January 28, 2001 but was not released fully in Uruguay until June 1.
The picture was screened at various film festivals, including: the Karlovy Vary Film Festiva, Czech Republic; the Helsinki International Film Festival, Finland; the Warsaw Film Festival, Poland; the Medellín de Película, Colombia; the Latin America Film Festival, Poland; and others.
Critical reception
Deborah Young, film critic for Variety magazine and reporting from the Rotterdam Film Festival, gave the film a mixed review and wrote, "A rare offering from Uruguay, 25 Watts dully portrays the dim lives of three teenage boys in a sleepy Montevideo neighborhood. With no story to tell, tyro co-directors Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll place far too much faith in hang-dog, Jim Jarmusch-style humor, emphasized by repetitious dialog, flat B&W lensing, and limited sets. Pic—which won one of the three Tiger Awards and the Youth Jury Prize at Rotterdam—lacks the spark of inspiration that would make this formula work, and most viewers are likely to run for cover well before the end."[2]
