Sundance Institute Latin Fellowship winner Ana Bovino, one of Argentina’s notable new filmmaking talents, has just received private funding for her documentary project, The Nights (Las Noches), from the heavyweight Dr. Jane Ray, founder of Cat Flap Media and consultant artistic director of British funding organization The Wickers.
Bought in various co-production markets including Chile’s Connector 2025, which won the Cannes Document Award and won a ticket to this year’s Cannes Document Spotlight, Bovino’s film debut is competing for the €15,000 ($17,200) Last Push Prize at Madrid’s ECAM Forum co-production market, which runs from June 9 to 11.
Born from Bovino’s desire to reimagine the Middle Eastern folk tale “One Thousand and One Nights,” and Scheherazade’s quest to liberate women from violence through storytelling, “The Nights” follows La Pichi, a larger-than-life woman living in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, who turns her life into a story every night. “Born in a remote realm and body, she uses humor, imagination, and irreverence to reclaim her voice and identity,” the logline reads.
When asked how he found La Pici, Bovino said he came to her in 2020 as part of an open casting call for “The Knights.” It was originally planned to be a theatrical play, with various amateur actors acting as narrators in the style of Scheherazade.
“From the beginning, La Pici amazed us with her talent as a storyteller and her ability to tell her stories, often with a touch of poetry and magic. She was our Scheherazade! I quickly abandoned the stage-to-screen idea, but the play materialized and I ended up making La Pici the main character in The Nights.”
For Bovino, not only La Pici’s impressive personality, storytelling talent, and dignity, but also her eye-catching sexy curves and weight of 120 kg made her a natural centerpiece. “She defines herself as fat. It’s her political identity,” Bovino said, structuring the story as “a cinematic book that follows La Pici’s journey from imposed shame to pride to joy to the possibility of being loved for and without her body.”
When asked about her decision to star in the film, Fey told Variety that she was literally “blown away” by the rough cut of “The Knights,” which was shown at the Connector Document Market 2025 in Chile.
“It’s true that there are no women in this world, and there are probably quite a few men who don’t stop in front of the mirror and suck their cheeks and stomachs and secretly wish they were slimmer,” she joked. “I knew a challenging yet deeply compassionate documentary focused on hyper-curvaceous women would resonate internationally.”
“The wildly popular and critically acclaimed Jeannie Finley’s Your Fat Friend (2023) taught us that,” Fey said. “But The Nights is much more than that. Pichi is the star and a thoroughly enchanting Scheherazade, transporting us into The Thousand and One Nights as she weaves her way through the backstreets of her world, Buenos Aires, to survive. Pichi brings light and warmth and the promise of hot sex into the darkest nights.”
“So the decision to invest was easy,” Fay said. “We felt that the director and producer Natalia de la Vega in particular had a very strong mutually supportive relationship, so they became an effective, well-organized core team and were able to take feedback in a refreshing way.”
Mr. de la Vega of Argentina’s Navega Cine, which co-produced with Bovino, said it was crucial for Picture Rock to have the support of Mr. Fey, who is currently a consultant producer on the project. “We are very proud of this film. It was very difficult financially and emotionally to make this film, but we believe in Argentine cinema,” de la Vega told Variety.
“The entire audiovisual industry and its ecosystem in Argentina is being dismantled by the current government, which is why we need foreign investors to come in,” she added. “Additional support would be greatly appreciated,” said the producer, who is keen to meet potential distributors, sales agents and festival programmers at the ECAM forum.
