Whisky Romeo Zulu
Encyclopedia
Whisky Romeo Zulu is a 2005 Argentine
drama film
, directed by Enrique Piñeyro
and written by Piñeyro and Emiliano Torres
. Aqua Films
' Verónica Cura
was the executive producer and Enrique Piñeyro was the producer.
The drama is based on the experiences of Enrique Piñeyro, former airline pilot turned whistle-blower, who became a film actor-director, and of the August 31, 1999 LAPA
(Líneas Aéreas Privadas Argentinas) airline accident.
The LAPA Boeing 737–200 plane, LAPA flight 3142
, went into flames after crashing into a mound in midtown Buenos Aires
, causing the death of 65 people, and severely injuring 17. The film's basic theme: the general corrosive deregulation, the greedy cost-cutting corporations, and the corrupt government officials, found in the Argentine airline industry. The film is named after the NATO phonetic alphabet
version of the identifier of the accident aircraft, LV-WRZ (Lima Victor – Whisky Romeo Zulu)
retrieved from an air disaster. The docudrama
then tells the story of director Enrique Piñeyro
, who plays himself as T, a principled pilot at LAPA, an Argentine airline, upset over his company's disregard of basic safety regulations in order to save money.
When T complains, he is labeled a troublemaker by the airline company. Soon he's chastised by his fellow pilots. When things get worse he walks out of the cockpit after multiple navigational instruments are inoperative and refuses to fly. The company simply replaces him and gets another pilot to fly. Increasingly frustrated and worried about a crash, T finally writes an angry letter to his superiors, warning that a crash is inevitable if action is not taken.
The letter is leaked to the media, and the airline is sold, but the new owners want Pineyro to retract his statement. Complicating matters, their public relations person is Marcela (Mercedes Morán
), a love interest from his youth. Even though Marcela is married, T pursues her. T's story is inter-cut with the District Attorney who is looking into the LAPA flight 3142
crash, and starts receiving death threats. Yanelli's character manages to bring the company’s chief executives and the Argentine Air Force authorities before a criminal court, establishing a unique precedent in commercial aviation history.
on April 21, 2005.
The film screened at various film festivals, including: the Biarritz La Cita Film Festival, France
; the Flanders International Film Festival; Belgium
; the Wisconsin Film Festival, United States
; the Seattle International Film Festival
; the World Film Festival of Bangkok
; the Havana Film Festival
; and others.
Piñeyro resigned from his position in June 1999 – two months before the accident occurred- after voicing his concerns about the LAPA's safety policy. Regarding his motivation for making the film, Piñeyro said:
"I was personally interested in recounting how the accident came to occur, not the fact that the pilots forgot about the flaps and the plane blew up, but why they forgot the flaps. And what was the process, because forgetting the flaps was the straw that broke the camel's back in a series of tremendous violations of regulations. I was interested in portraying what isn't apparent about the accident, not just the final link (the pilot). Because all the links that came before were conveniently hidden because they compromised the establishment, the business."
According to producers, due to the nature of the film, a lot of the filming was done in secret. This was especially true when they filmed in airline areas. Some shots were taken with telephoto lenses.
Critic Scott Foundas, writing for FIPRESCI
believes the film achieved Enrique Piñeyro's exact goal. He wrote, "Whisky Romeo Zulu ...emerges as a stirring, if obvious piece of agitprop that achieves exactly what it sets out to achieve. That is to say it works the audience up into an angry lather, and you emerge from the theater never wanting to set foot on another airplane again — at least, not if you feel you may have paid less than fair market value for the ticket." However, Foundas did not like the flashbacks to Piñeyro’s childhood which he called "gooey and nostalgic."
The film critic for Seattle's The Stranger
, Andrew Wright, liked Piñeyro's directorial debut, and wrote, "[D]irector Enrique Piñeyro's utterly damning docudrama comes off as both a searing factual indictment of Argentina's passenger-flight standards, and a crackerjack thriller in its own right...It also helps that he proves to be an instinctive filmmaker, employing an intriguingly fractured, minutely detailed take on the material, which hopscotches between events leading up to the easily avoidable incident, and a harried investigator's efforts to make sense of the flight recordings afterward."
Nominations
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
, directed by Enrique Piñeyro
Enrique Piñeyro (actor)
Enrique Piñeyro is a pilot turned film actor, producer, crash analyst, aeronautical physician, film director, and screenplay writer, working partly in Argentina. Piñeyro and Verónica Cura own Aqua Films, a film production company in Argentina.- Biography :Piñeyro was born in Genoa, Italy, 1956...
and written by Piñeyro and Emiliano Torres
Emiliano Torres
Emiliano Torres is an Argentine assistant film director, screenplay writer, cinematographer, and production manager.He works in the cinema of Argentina.-Filmography:Writer...
. Aqua Films
Aqua Films
Aqua Films is an Argentine film production company that provides administrative services to local and foreign productions.The company arranges and organizes pre-productions, film shoots and post-production work, including:...
' Verónica Cura
Verónica Cura
Verónica Cura is a film producer, production manager, and production designer.She works in the cinema of Argentina.Cura has worked with Enrique Piñeyro at Aqua Films, a film production company in Argentina....
was the executive producer and Enrique Piñeyro was the producer.
The drama is based on the experiences of Enrique Piñeyro, former airline pilot turned whistle-blower, who became a film actor-director, and of the August 31, 1999 LAPA
LAPA
Líneas Aéreas Privadas Argentinas , more commonly known by the acronym LAPA, was an airline based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At its heyday, the carrier operated international services to the United States and Uruguay, as well as an extensive domestic network within Argentina. Additionally, the...
(Líneas Aéreas Privadas Argentinas) airline accident.
The LAPA Boeing 737–200 plane, LAPA flight 3142
LAPA flight 3142
LAPA Flight 3142 was a scheduled Buenos Aires–Córdoba flight operated by the Argentine airline Líneas Aéreas Privadas Argentinas. The service was operated with a Boeing 737-204C, registration LV-WRZ, that crashed on at 20:54 local time while attempting to take off from Aeroparque Jorge Newbery...
, went into flames after crashing into a mound in midtown Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, causing the death of 65 people, and severely injuring 17. The film's basic theme: the general corrosive deregulation, the greedy cost-cutting corporations, and the corrupt government officials, found in the Argentine airline industry. The film is named after the NATO phonetic alphabet
NATO phonetic alphabet
The NATO phonetic alphabet, more accurately known as the NATO spelling alphabet and also called the ICAO phonetic or spelling alphabet, the ITU phonetic alphabet, and the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet...
version of the identifier of the accident aircraft, LV-WRZ (Lima Victor – Whisky Romeo Zulu)
Plot
The picture opens with the District Attorney (Adolfo Yanelli), listening to voices from a recording in the black boxCockpit voice recorder
A cockpit voice recorder , often referred to as a "black box", is a flight recorder used to record the audio environment in the flight deck of an aircraft for the purpose of investigation of accidents and incidents...
retrieved from an air disaster. The docudrama
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
then tells the story of director Enrique Piñeyro
Enrique Piñeyro (actor)
Enrique Piñeyro is a pilot turned film actor, producer, crash analyst, aeronautical physician, film director, and screenplay writer, working partly in Argentina. Piñeyro and Verónica Cura own Aqua Films, a film production company in Argentina.- Biography :Piñeyro was born in Genoa, Italy, 1956...
, who plays himself as T, a principled pilot at LAPA, an Argentine airline, upset over his company's disregard of basic safety regulations in order to save money.
When T complains, he is labeled a troublemaker by the airline company. Soon he's chastised by his fellow pilots. When things get worse he walks out of the cockpit after multiple navigational instruments are inoperative and refuses to fly. The company simply replaces him and gets another pilot to fly. Increasingly frustrated and worried about a crash, T finally writes an angry letter to his superiors, warning that a crash is inevitable if action is not taken.
The letter is leaked to the media, and the airline is sold, but the new owners want Pineyro to retract his statement. Complicating matters, their public relations person is Marcela (Mercedes Morán
Mercedes Morán
Mercedes Morán is a film and television actress.She works in the cinema of Argentina.-Filmography:* La Ciénaga aka The Swamp* Próxima salida * Whisky Romeo Zulu...
), a love interest from his youth. Even though Marcela is married, T pursues her. T's story is inter-cut with the District Attorney who is looking into the LAPA flight 3142
LAPA flight 3142
LAPA Flight 3142 was a scheduled Buenos Aires–Córdoba flight operated by the Argentine airline Líneas Aéreas Privadas Argentinas. The service was operated with a Boeing 737-204C, registration LV-WRZ, that crashed on at 20:54 local time while attempting to take off from Aeroparque Jorge Newbery...
crash, and starts receiving death threats. Yanelli's character manages to bring the company’s chief executives and the Argentine Air Force authorities before a criminal court, establishing a unique precedent in commercial aviation history.
Cast
- Enrique PiñeyroEnrique Piñeyro (actor)Enrique Piñeyro is a pilot turned film actor, producer, crash analyst, aeronautical physician, film director, and screenplay writer, working partly in Argentina. Piñeyro and Verónica Cura own Aqua Films, a film production company in Argentina.- Biography :Piñeyro was born in Genoa, Italy, 1956...
as T - Mercedes MoránMercedes MoránMercedes Morán is a film and television actress.She works in the cinema of Argentina.-Filmography:* La Ciénaga aka The Swamp* Próxima salida * Whisky Romeo Zulu...
as Marcela - Alejandro AwadaAlejandro AwadaAlejandro Awada is an Argentine character actor.- Filmography :*Bye Bye Life *Ratón Pérez, El *Suspiros del corazón *El Aura *Tigre escondido, El...
as Gonzalo - Carlos Portaluppi as Gordo
- Martin Slipak as Pequeño T (Little T)
Distribution
The picture was first presented at the Toronto Film Festival on September 10, 2004. It opened wide in ArgentinaArgentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
on April 21, 2005.
The film screened at various film festivals, including: the Biarritz La Cita Film Festival, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
; the Flanders International Film Festival; Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
; the Wisconsin Film Festival, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
; the Seattle International Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
The Seattle International Film Festival , held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees...
; the World Film Festival of Bangkok
World Film Festival of Bangkok
The World Film Festival of Bangkok is an annual international film festival held between October & November in Bangkok, Thailand.The 8th Annual World Film Festival of Bangkok will be held between 5 - 14 November, 2010.-History:...
; the Havana Film Festival
Havana Film Festival
The Havana Film Festival is a Cuban festival that focuses on the promotion of Spanish-language filmmakers. It is also known in Spanish as Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana, and in English as Festival of New Latinamerican Cinema of La Havana.The festival takes place...
; and others.
Background
The film is a fictional reproduction of the background of the accident as seen through the eyes of Enrique Piñeyro, who was a LAPA pilot from 1988 to 1999.Piñeyro resigned from his position in June 1999 – two months before the accident occurred- after voicing his concerns about the LAPA's safety policy. Regarding his motivation for making the film, Piñeyro said:
"I was personally interested in recounting how the accident came to occur, not the fact that the pilots forgot about the flaps and the plane blew up, but why they forgot the flaps. And what was the process, because forgetting the flaps was the straw that broke the camel's back in a series of tremendous violations of regulations. I was interested in portraying what isn't apparent about the accident, not just the final link (the pilot). Because all the links that came before were conveniently hidden because they compromised the establishment, the business."
According to producers, due to the nature of the film, a lot of the filming was done in secret. This was especially true when they filmed in airline areas. Some shots were taken with telephoto lenses.
Critical reception
Film critic Pamela Troy liked the acting in the film and wrote, "Much more than a whistle blowing thriller, this beautifully made film is a powerful critique of profit-making over concern for human life."Critic Scott Foundas, writing for FIPRESCI
FIPRESCI
The International Federation of Film Critics is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world for "the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests." It was founded in June 1930 in...
believes the film achieved Enrique Piñeyro's exact goal. He wrote, "Whisky Romeo Zulu ...emerges as a stirring, if obvious piece of agitprop that achieves exactly what it sets out to achieve. That is to say it works the audience up into an angry lather, and you emerge from the theater never wanting to set foot on another airplane again — at least, not if you feel you may have paid less than fair market value for the ticket." However, Foundas did not like the flashbacks to Piñeyro’s childhood which he called "gooey and nostalgic."
The film critic for Seattle's The Stranger
The Stranger (newspaper)
The Stranger is an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle, Washington, USA. It runs a blog known as Slog.-History:The Stranger was founded by Tim Keck, who had previously co-founded the satirical newspaper The Onion, and cartoonist James Sturm. Its first issue came out on September 23, 1991...
, Andrew Wright, liked Piñeyro's directorial debut, and wrote, "[D]irector Enrique Piñeyro's utterly damning docudrama comes off as both a searing factual indictment of Argentina's passenger-flight standards, and a crackerjack thriller in its own right...It also helps that he proves to be an instinctive filmmaker, employing an intriguingly fractured, minutely detailed take on the material, which hopscotches between events leading up to the easily avoidable incident, and a harried investigator's efforts to make sense of the flight recordings afterward."
Awards
Wins- Biarritz La Cita International Film Festival: Best Film; Official Jury Award; 2004.
- Havana Film FestivalHavana Film FestivalThe Havana Film Festival is a Cuban festival that focuses on the promotion of Spanish-language filmmakers. It is also known in Spanish as Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana, and in English as Festival of New Latinamerican Cinema of La Havana.The festival takes place...
: Coral Award; Best Feature Film debut; Cultural Diversity Award; 2004. - Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent CinemaBuenos Aires International Festival of Independent CinemaThe Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente is an international festival of independent films organized each year in the month of April, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.The festival is managed by the Ministerio de Cultura del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, it is not...
: Best Film – Audience Award, National Film; Best Film – Signis Award; 2004. - Viña del Mar International Film Festival: Best Actor Award to Enrique Piñeyro; 2004.
- Bahamas International Film FestivalBahamas International Film FestivalBahamas International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in early December in the Bahamas, founded in 2004.The Bahamas International Film Festival is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing the local community and international visitors with a diverse presentation of films...
: "Spirit of Freedom" Jury Mention; 2004. - Latin American Festival of Film and Video: Special Jury Award; Best Film – Critics Association Award; Brazil; 2005.
- Lleida Latin-American Film FestivalLleida Latin-American Film FestivalThe Lleida Latin-American Film Festival is a cinema festival that takes place in Lleida, Spain awarding Latin American films. It is organised by the Latin American Centre of Lleida and is sponsored by the city council , the University of Lleida and La Caixa...
: Best Director; Enrique Piñeyro; 2005.
Nominations
- Argentine Film Critics Association Awards: Silver Condor, Best Art Direction, Cristina Nigro; Best Cinematography, Ramiro Civita; Best Editing, Jacopo Quadri; Best First Film, Enrique Piñeyro; Best Original Screenplay, Enrique Piñeyro; Best Sound, Marcos De Aguirre; Best Supporting Actor, Alejandro Awada; 2006.
External links
- Whisky Romeo Zulu film review at Clarín by Diego Lerer, member of FIPRESCIFIPRESCIThe International Federation of Film Critics is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world for "the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests." It was founded in June 1930 in...
- Whisky Romeo Zulu at cinenacional.comCinenacional.comCinenacional.com is a web portal and web-based database about Argentine cinema.The site provides a vast array of information, including: films, television programs, directors, actors, cinematographers, film editors, production designers, and other production professions in Argentina...
- Whisky Romeo Zulu film trailer at You Tube