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JUAN PABLO REBELLA & PABLO STOLL Directors & Screenwriters
Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll were born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1974 and started working together while they were both studying Social Communication at university. Both graduated in 1999.In 2001 they had their first international success with 25 WATTS, which won several international awards and has put Uruguay on the map as a film making country. WHISKY is Stoll and Rebella’s second feature film.
The screenplay was honoured with the Sundance-NHK International Filmmakers Award for Latin-America.
Both directors also work as freelance directors for television and advertising.
Selected Filmography
2004 WHISKY
About the Production
July 2003. It is very cold in Montevideo. After a day of filming, we go to a bar near the set for a beer. We are: the two directors, the sound technicians and the assistant directors.
The assistant director goes to make a call. He returns and, in a monotone voice, tells us that the shooting schedule for the following day has changed. We ask him why and he lies to us. He's not supposed to tell us lies; he's a friend we've known since our university days. We've known him since we were 18 years old. We ask him what happened. He tells us that the car featured in the scene the following day, the car we'd already used in several shots, has been sold. The car is a shoddy piece of scrap metal that can only be driven by someone as careless as Jacobo, the main character of the film. A sound technician asks: 'Who would buy that car?' The assistant director takes a gulp of his beer and replies: 'A junkyard.'
It is extremely difficult to produce a film in Uruguay. Of course, this statement would apply to practically any country and would still be true. But in Uruguay it is difficult to produce anything at all; stockings, for example, as demonstrated in WHISKY.
To produce 25 WATTS, our first feature film, we had to invent a semi-collaborative mode of production. At the time, it was the only way to complete the project. For WHISKY, and following the experience accumulated during the production of 25 WATTS, it seemed that we had to go a step further.
PABLO STOLL - Director's Statement
WHISKY was made possible thanks to the support of individuals and businesses from several countries. We also had the energy input of the same team of Uruguayan technicians that worked on '25 Watts'.
August 2003. It is very cold in Piriápolis. In a corridor of an old hotel, about 40 people are hugging each other. 'Cut!' has been cried out for the last time. Shooting is over. Eight weeks in all, and now it's over. Everyone has already forgotten the beat-up car and the cold nights. Some cry; all of us are tired and shaken. Some of us have been friends for as long as 10 years. We had all dreamed of producing films in Uruguay. Today, we finished filming the second one. We all know how difficult it is, but at this very moment, we wouldn't hesitate to start shooting another one, because the more difficult it is, the more beautiful it is. Don't you think so? At first it was the factory: the old machines, the fluorescent tubes, the piled-up stockings, the lives that emerged from those things. What goes on behind the metal shutters of those decaying factories? It is from all this that the characters arose. Pure invention: two Jewish brothers and a woman. Plus, a sham, a ruse. Another invention within the invention. The original idea was quite simple, almost crazy, nothing outstanding. A small tale. A story where the characters bond with each other through a series of small lies. We were interested in exploring the routines, the pro- tocols, the ready-made phrases, what they say and what they hide. Jacobo and Marta agree to live a lie for a few days, a fiction. Herman arrives from Brazil and in some way he adapts and fits in with it. How much is the lie they live worth to them? To what extent is this a lie, and to what extent does the lie enable them to free themselves from the routine lie, the everyday lie? For some time now I have been asking myself why we produced this film. Why, after '25 Watts', a youthful and autobiographical film, we produced WHISKY, a film about two 60-year-old Jewish brothers, a woman and a stocking factory. I am an only child, just like my partner. We are neither 60 nor Jewish nor do we have a stocking factory. When we wrote the script, we started to realize that perhaps these characters were not much different from ourselves. That we were not altogether so far from these three types of loneliness. That they could be a projection of ourselves, of what we might be in twenty, thirty years. Behind the mask played by Jacobo, Herman and Marta, we come face to face with our fears. In some way, WHISKY is different from, yet at the same time very similar to '25 Watts'. There is something in its atmosphere, its melancholy, its tone, that links the two. Something in the tension achieved by the scenes. Where in '25 Watts' there were words, here we have silence, but both work the same way, as if the WHISKY characters were already tired of talking, as if they had nothing else to say. It is said that some directors always make the same film. Maybe this is happening to us a little too.
July 2003. It is very cold in Montevideo. After a day of filming, we go to a bar near the set for a beer. We are: the two directors, the sound technicians and the assistant directors.
The assistant director goes to make a call. He returns and, in a monotone voice, tells us that the shooting schedule for the following day has changed. We ask him why and he lies to us. He's not supposed to tell us lies; he's a friend we've known since our university days. We've known him since we were 18 years old. We ask him what happened. He tells us that the car featured in the scene the following day, the car we'd already used in several shots, has been sold. The car is a shoddy piece of scrap metal that can only be driven by someone as careless as Jacobo, the main character of the film. A sound technician asks: 'Who would buy that car?' The assistant director takes a gulp of his beer and replies: 'A junkyard.'
It is extremely difficult to produce a film in Uruguay. Of course, this statement would apply to practically any country and would still be true. But in Uruguay it is difficult to produce anything at all; stockings, for example, as demonstrated in WHISKY.
To produce 25 WATTS, our first feature film, we had to invent a semi-collaborative mode of production. At the time, it was the only way to complete the project. For WHISKY, and following the experience accumulated during the production of 25 WATTS, it seemed that we had to go a step further.
PABLO STOLL - Director's Statement
WHISKY was made possible thanks to the support of individuals and businesses from several countries. We also had the energy input of the same team of Uruguayan technicians that worked on '25 Watts'.
August 2003. It is very cold in Piriápolis. In a corridor of an old hotel, about 40 people are hugging each other. 'Cut!' has been cried out for the last time. Shooting is over. Eight weeks in all, and now it's over. Everyone has already forgotten the beat-up car and the cold nights. Some cry; all of us are tired and shaken. Some of us have been friends for as long as 10 years. We had all dreamed of producing films in Uruguay. Today, we finished filming the second one. We all know how difficult it is, but at this very moment, we wouldn't hesitate to start shooting another one, because the more difficult it is, the more beautiful it is. Don't you think so? At first it was the factory: the old machines, the fluorescent tubes, the piled-up stockings, the lives that emerged from those things. What goes on behind the metal shutters of those decaying factories? It is from all this that the characters arose. Pure invention: two Jewish brothers and a woman. Plus, a sham, a ruse. Another invention within the invention. The original idea was quite simple, almost crazy, nothing outstanding. A small tale. A story where the characters bond with each other through a series of small lies. We were interested in exploring the routines, the pro- tocols, the ready-made phrases, what they say and what they hide. Jacobo and Marta agree to live a lie for a few days, a fiction. Herman arrives from Brazil and in some way he adapts and fits in with it. How much is the lie they live worth to them? To what extent is this a lie, and to what extent does the lie enable them to free themselves from the routine lie, the everyday lie? For some time now I have been asking myself why we produced this film. Why, after '25 Watts', a youthful and autobiographical film, we produced WHISKY, a film about two 60-year-old Jewish brothers, a woman and a stocking factory. I am an only child, just like my partner. We are neither 60 nor Jewish nor do we have a stocking factory. When we wrote the script, we started to realize that perhaps these characters were not much different from ourselves. That we were not altogether so far from these three types of loneliness. That they could be a projection of ourselves, of what we might be in twenty, thirty years. Behind the mask played by Jacobo, Herman and Marta, we come face to face with our fears. In some way, WHISKY is different from, yet at the same time very similar to '25 Watts'. There is something in its atmosphere, its melancholy, its tone, that links the two. Something in the tension achieved by the scenes. Where in '25 Watts' there were words, here we have silence, but both work the same way, as if the WHISKY characters were already tired of talking, as if they had nothing else to say. It is said that some directors always make the same film. Maybe this is happening to us a little too.
