Andy and Barbara Muschietti are best known as the brother-sister duo of directors and producers of the movie “It” and the HBO prequel series “It: Welcome to Derry.” But this year, they’ve executive produced an entirely new project based on real-world horrors and disappearances in their native Argentina.
“Norita” is a documentary directed by Jason McNamara and Andrea Carbonat Tortonese. The film tells the story of Nora “Norita” Cortinas, the mother of an Argentine activist who disappeared during the military dictatorship of the 1970s. Cortinas’ efforts to demand that the government reveal the truth about her son’s whereabouts sparked the Madres de Plaza de Mayo movement, where revolutionary mothers protested and pressured the autocratic government for information about their missing children.
The Muschiettis got involved in the project after watching McNamara’s previous documentary, “The Messenger on a White Horse,” about British-Argentine journalist Robert Cox’s daring efforts to cover the Plaza de Mayo during the dictatorship.
Andy and Barbara grew up under the dictatorship in Argentina, so this topic was personally shocking to them. “We are Argentinians. We spent our childhood in Argentina during the dictatorship. I was 5 years old when the military took over the country and 13 when democracy returned,” Barbara told Variety.
In addition to the Muschiettis, Jane Fonda also joined Nolita as an executive producer. “Jane Fonda also got involved at the same time as me. Oh my god, I thought I knew everything, and then I met this woman. I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s so powerful and relentless,” Barbara continued. “A month ago, we had a screening at the Museum of Tolerance, and she came and showed us the screening. Her speech moved me to tears. She understands that the film is about Nolita, but it’s also about issues that America is having right now. She understands that it’s comforting to be an American and think that something like this will never happen here. But the reality is that it can happen, and people have to start paying attention.”
It is self-evident that this documentary is timely for America, and for any place enduring a turbulent political climate. But what’s more subtle is how this doc fits into the Muschietti family’s larger filmography. The filmmakers are Argentinian, but their best-known work is the Stephen King adaptation, in which children battle a murderous clown demon in Maine. On the surface, it’s quite far from Buenos Aires.
However, there are overlapping themes between projects. “Norita” explores the real-world manifestations of the horror that “it” implies in a variety of ways. In Derry, Maine, where “It” is set, people are going missing at an alarming rate, yet people remain accomplices out of fear. The fictional town’s culprit may be a paranormal personified by Pennywise the Clown, but he is merely a symbol of American colonization, racism, trauma, and exclusion, as surfaced in the many power struggles depicted in “It: Welcome to Derry.”
“Andy and I read this book when we were 14 and 15, two years after the end of the military regime and the restoration of democracy,” Barbara recalls. “And we fell in love with that book like we’ve never fallen into anything before. It was just crazy, and a big part of it was about the weaponization of fear. That’s what Pennywise does so well. Of course, it felt very relatable to us.”
“Norita” had its world premiere at the Dance with Film Festival in Los Angeles in June, and has since screened at more than a dozen film festivals around the world. We are currently in the process of receiving an award.
