The Protagonist

Paula is sitting in a café, giving a conversation class to a young German man. Her cellphone is new and won’t stop ringing; she hasn’t yet worked out how to switch it to silent mode. Suddenly robbers burst into the café. Paula tells her student not to resist and to hand over his cellphone and wallet. Her phone rings again and she tries desperately to make it stop. While she’s fumbling around, the robber passes by and she accidentally trips him up: Paula has unwittingly saved the day. Following the incident, Paula, an actress, achieves a measure of fame. She appears on tv and in the papers, is recognized on the street and people ask to have their picture taken with her. But the attention soon fizzles out and she returns to a dull life in which her career is going terribly and she’s trying to get over a recent break-up. (Mar del Plata International Film Festival)