50 Years of SIFF: The Headless Woman
April 26 - May 5, 2024
An affluent dentist hits something in the road but neither she nor her friends report the incident. When evidence emerges that she may have killed someone, the men in her life protect her secret. An elliptical psychological drama about guilt, responsibility, and self-deception.
Seattle International Film Festival 2009 selection, with director Lucretia Martel highlighted at the Festival as an Emerging Master.
A bourgeois middle-aged dentist named Veronica (Maria Onetto) drives alone on a dirt road, becomes distracted, and runs over something. Immediately she becomes disoriented, unmoored from her identity and reality, like a sleepwalker who’s actually awake. As the week go on, she becomes obsessed with the possibility that she may have killed someone: a young boy whose body is found in a roadside canal. Veronica tries to piece together what happened while her husband systematically erases her tracks. A chilling parable about a woman in shock, Lucrecia Martel’s third feature explores the intricacies of class and the role of women in a male-dominated society.
- Original Language Title: La mujer sin cabeza
- Director: Lucrecia Martel
- Principal Cast: Strand Releasing
- Country: Argentina, France/Italy/Spain
- Year: 2008
- Running Time: 87 min.
- Producer: Pedro Almodóvar, Augustin Almodóvar, Esther García, Veronica Cura, Enrique Pineyro, Lucrecia Martel, Marianne Slot, Vieri Razzini, Cesare Petrillo, Tilde Corsi
- Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel
- Cinematographers: Bárbara Álvarez
- Editors: Miguel Schverdfinger
- Music: María Onetto, Inés Efron, César Bordón, Claudia Cantero, Daniel Genoud, Guillermo Arengo, María Vaner
- Website: Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2008 (FIPRESCI Prize)
- Awards: The Holy Girl (2004) La Ciénaga (2001)
- Filmography: A middle-aged woman (Maria Nieto) is driving alone on a dirt road. Suddenly, she hits something––perhaps a dog, perhaps a boy, perhaps something more mysterious
- Language: Spanish
- US Distributor: Focus Features
- International Sales: http://www.aquafilms.com.ar/films_lamujersincabeza.html