Laura Citarella speaks fondly of the cultural education her parents gave her as a child in Argentina. Although she was born in La Plata, the capital of the country’s Buenos Aires Province, the memories she cherishes most are from the summers she spent in their hometown of Trenque Lauquen.
This small city in the Pampas region later became the backdrop for a number of the director’s films, including her celebrated 2022 feature Trenque Lauquen, which follows two men searching for the missing woman they love and earned Citarella a nomination for the Orizzonti Award for Best Film at that year’s Venice Film Festival. More recently, the country’s low grasslands served as the setting for El Affaire Miu Miu, a short commissioned by the cult Italian house as part of their ongoing Women’s Tales series. The film debuted in Venice this past August during the Giornate degli Autori, followed by a two-day talks program featuring brand ambassadors and actors Cailee Spaeny, Molly Gordon, and Valentina Romani.
El Affaire Miu Miu grew from Citarella’s interest in Hitchcockian mystery and female Sherlock Holmes figures who are on the hunt for “women that, for different reasons, run away.” The film begins, fittingly, with a fashion shoot starring an Italian model, set in the heart of the Argentine Pampas. After the shoot wraps, the model vanishes, and three of the town’s detectives—all women—embark on an investigation, piecing together clues hidden in cast-off Miu Miu garments and the surrounding landscape.
With the film’s release, Citarella is the latest creative to join the ranks of the Women’s Tales initiative, which since 2011 has invited visionary female directors to explore themes of vanity and femininity in commissioned short films. Previous participants include Ava DuVernay, Miranda July, Janicza Bravo, and Chui Mui Tan.
The fusion of fashion and landscape was particularly compelling for Citarella. “I was interested in exploring how a woman wearing Miu Miu arrives, stands, and walks in the Pampas—to explore and see how this image is forged,” the director muses. “From the beginning, clothes had to be like another protagonist with a narrative value, a narrative weight. They didn’t have to be something that contributes to forging a character—they had to be a main character in the construction of the story.”
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