Nobody’s Watching

(Nadie nos mira)

Julia Solomonoff / Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, United States / 2018 / 102 min
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  • Havana Film Festival

  • Tribeca Film Festival

    Best Actor

  • Gijón International Film Festival

  • Calgary International Film Festival

  • Rome Film Festival

  • Vancouver LatAm Film Festival

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English and Spanish with English subtitles

With Guillermo Pfening, Elena Roger, Rafael Ferro.

What happens when a man who is accustomed to being the centre of attention finds himself becoming invisible? When a life busked from cash in hand jobs trips into freefall? Julia Solomonoff’s delicately textured character study follows Nico, the former star of an Argentinian soap opera, who trades autograph hunters for anonymity and moves from Buenos Aires to New York to take a role in an indie movie. When the project stalls, he chooses to stay believing that his talent will help him find success. Too blond to play Latino and his accent too strong to play anything else, Nico falls through the cracks and must juggle odd jobs to survive. Unwilling to return home and be seen as a failure, Nico manages to stay afloat thanks to his ability to pretend to be something he isn’t.

Nobody’s Watching is a fresh and unexpected take on the immigrant tale, where the journey is not to get a Green card but confronting the true reasons for leaving home, and redefining one’s identity in one’s own terms.

Press

“NYT Critic's Pick. There’s a slight and not unpleasing paradox at the heart of Julia Solomonoff’s smart and engaging new movie, Nobody’s Watching. It is an uncommonly unhurried film about a character for whom time is running out.” – Glenn Kenny , New York Times

“Argentinian-American filmmaker Julia Solomonoff presents the immigrant experience from a unique perspective. A strong effort overall, Nobody's Watching is highly recommended for LGBTQ, Latin American, and World Cinema film collections.” – Kathy Fennessy, Video Librarian

“Solomonoff has crafted an arresting tale of privilege and displacement, of the ironies of navigating American society as an outsider, of what newcomers expect of New York and what it actually offers.” – Alan Scherstuhl , The Village Voice

“The film ripples with a palpable sense of the sheer distance between Nico and his goals. And it's this careful attention to narrative rhythm that strikes at the heart of the interminable sense of postponement that greets Nico at every juncture and underscores the social challenges he (or any other undocumented immigrant) faces.” – Peter Goldberg, Slant

About the Director
Julia Solomonoff is a filmmaker with a Cinematography degree from the Argentine National School of Film (ENERC). She also has an MFA in Film Directing from Columbia University, New York, where she graduated with honors. She was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, a Milos Forman Grant, and a DGA Best Latinx Student Filmmaker Award.

Julia Solomonoff - Nobody's Watching

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Solomonoff’s feature films as writer/director include Hermanas (Toronto, 2005), The Last Summer of la Boyita (Cannes, San Sebastian 2009), and Nobody’s Watching (Nadie nos mira, 2017). The film won the Best Actor Award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

She directed two documentary series for television: Aerocene Pacha (Canal Encuentro, 2020), Parana, biography of a river (2010). And the TV movie The Suitor (PBS, 2001). Her film work is included in the permanent collections at MOMA and The Shed.

Solomonoff has also produced a wide array of films including Lucrecia Martel’s Zama (Venice, Toronto, NYFF 2017), Everybody has a Plan (Toronto 2012, starring Viggo Mortensen), Celina Murga’s The Third Bank of the River (Berlin 2014, exec prod by Martin Scorsese), Lucia Murat’s A memoria que me contan (FIPRESCI award, Moscow FF 2015), Julia Murat’s Pendular (FIPRESCI Winner at Berlin Panorama 2017) and Found Memories (Venice 2011, winner of over 30 international awards), and Alejandro Landes’ Cocalero (Sundance 2007). Most recently, she produced Clara Cullen’s Manuela (2022) and Alessandra Sanguinetti’s The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer (Sundance Doc Lab Grant Winner 2020). Solomonoff was 1st Assistant Director on Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries and has also worked with Isabel Coixet, Martin Rejtman, and Carlos Sorin.

Solomonoff serves on the Board of MacDowell Residency and has been teaching film directing at the graduate level for a decade, starting at Columbia University, then moving on to NYU Tisch Graduate Film, and last, serving as Head of Directing at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College before returning home to NYU Tisch Graduate Film where she now serves as the chair.

Notes on Film

“Nobody’s Watching is an intimate, moving portrait of a man in search of his place. Nico escaped an obsessive and painful relationship and is trying to reinvent himself. When Martin comes back into his life, he needs to confront his disenchantment and redefine his place, his path, and himself.

In the era of selfies, surveillance, and Instagram, there is no lack of cameras or images, but who’s watching, really? Nico aches for the absence of a loving gaze. The film explores the pleasures of freedom and anonymity of modern urban migrations and its reverse side: the loneliness and isolation of rootlessness.

Where do we belong and what belongs to us? What defines us? Is it geography, nationality, language, class, gender, generation? How much of our identity is still tied to a collective story, language, or territory? The more virtual we become, the more we seem to long for roots, for something to hold onto, something that transcends us, that precedes and continues us.”

– Julia Solomonoff, Director

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