Ricardo Preve

In 2003, Preve was the co-producer of the musical documentary Tango, A Strange Turn, about the new generation of tango artists in Argentina. The documentary was directed by Mercedes García Guevara and premiered in Argentina in 2005.[3] In that same year he organized the Argentine Film Festival in conjunction with the Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia. The event took place in April. One year later, Preve registered production credits in the documentary Mondovino. The film, recorded with a manual digital camera in locations in Italy, France, the United States and Argentina, was part of the Official Selection of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.[4]

In 2005, Preve directed the documentary Chagas: A Hidden Affliction, about the Chagas disease. In the picture, a child suffering from the disease.

His debut as a director came in 2005 with Chagas: A Hidden Affliction, a documentary that deals with the subject of Chagas disease and its spread.[5] The film, which was supported by the humanitarian organization Doctors without Borders, was filmed in Argentine provinces like Santiago del Estero, Salta and Jujuy, and featured testimonies from medical specialists, researchers and people suffering from the disease.[6] During 2006 Preve wrote, directed and produced the short documentary Esperanza Means Hope[7] and worked as executive producer of the breast cancer based documentary Summer Running: The Race to Cure Breast Cancer, directed by American filmmaker Scott Mactavish and starring actress Sissy Spacek.[8]

Preve wrote and directed two short fiction films: La noche antes[9] in 2006 and La notte prima in 2007.[10] The films, which tell the story of the last night in the life of Martín Miguel de Güemes (a military and political figure who played a key role in Argentina's War of Independence) and Anita Garibaldi (known as "the heroine of the two worlds") respectively, won recognition at film events in Argentina and internationally.[11] In 2008, the filmmaker collaborated with National Geographic in the production of the TV show Darwin's Secret Notebooks, providing logistics and production services in Argentina, Uruguay and Ecuador. The series was broadcast by the channel on February 10, 2009.[12] His partnership with the network continued, playing roles of production and research in the television documentaries Child Mummy Sacrifice (about the preserved bodies of three Inca children found in the province of Salta), Ghosts of Machu Picchu (broadcast on PBS),[13] Twins (about the experiments carried out by Josef Mengele) and Are We There Yet?: World Adventure (children's series broadcast by National Geographic Kids in Brazil). Child Mummy Sacrifice won an Emmy nomination in the category of "Best Lighting and Scenic Design".[14]

On December 4, 2009, his first fiction feature film, José Ignacio was released. The film, co-produced between Uruguay and Argentina,[15][16] was part of the official selection of the Punta del Este International Film Festival, as well as the Virginia Film Festival, the Levante Film Festival and the Strasbourg International Film Festival.[17]

In 2011 Preve wrote the script for the Argentine environmental series Diary of a Solar Car and began work on the first season of the Uruguayan TV fiction series Garzón, a modern adaptation of Cervantes' Don Quixote, filmed in a small town in Uruguay, which Preve directed and wrote. A year later, he was again interested in Chagas disease, producing and directing the television special Chagas: A Silent Killer. Broadcast by Al Jazeera in April 2013, this production featured renowned soccer player Lionel Messi, who dedicated a few words to the project through a video that was shown at an event in Cochambamba, Bolivia.[18][19]

In 2013, the filmmaker became involved as the director and co-scriptwriter in the TV series El francés, filmed in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and released in late 2014 in that country. Also in 2014, Preve produced and directed a series of videos filmed in Kenya in support of Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative.[20] A year later, he produced, directed and wrote a new documentary, entitled The Patagonian Bones, about the discovery of the remains of the first Welsh woman who died in Patagonia in 1865. The film was broadcast on Argentine public television.[21][22] The Patagonian Bones was successful at international festivals, winning awards and nominations at events like Accolade Global Film Competition in California, Nuevas Miradas en la Televisión Argentina,[23] Latitude Film Awards, London International Motion Picture Awards and North European International Film Festival, among others.[24]

In 2019 the film Coming Home was released, about the repatriation of the remains of an Italian sailor who died in World War II. The image shows the replica of the submarine used in the film.

In 2016 Preve got involved in a new project, the documentary Looking for Marie Anne, based on the search for the remains of Marie Anne Erize, a French-Argentine model who belonged to the Montoneros urban guerrilla and who mysteriously disappeared in October 1976.[25] After five years of work, in 2018 Preve wrote, directed and produced a new feature film, Coming Home, which recounts the events of the repatriation of the remains of Carlo Acefalo, an Italian sailor who died during World War II, from a desert island in the Red Sea to his native country.[26][27] Between 2018 and 2019, Coming Home won numerous awards at film events in Uruguay, United Kingdom, Spain and United States.[28]

In 2021, Preve produced and directed From Sudan to Argentina in the United States, Argentina and Sudan. The feature documentary tells the story of the Argentine Historian and Egyptologist Abraham Rosenvasser, as leader of an UNESCO sponsored French-Argentine archeological mission in 1961-1963. The mission involved saving the treasures of the temple of Aksha in northern Sudan, before they were destroyed by the waters of the Aswan dam in Egypt, which was being built at that time.[29] The film was shown in various international film festivals, and received awards and special mentions.[30][31][32] The theatrical release was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 3, 2022.[33]

A Grayling Never Dies is the next project by Preve. The film, in which he will work as director, producer and screenwriter, is based on the adventures of the English outlaw Helen Greenhill in Patagonia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[34] The script for A Grayling Never Dies has won international awards at events in Europe and the United States.[35][36]