EXCLUSIVE: Brazilian director Gabe Kinger’s second feature Isabel world premieres in Berlin’s Panorama section next week and Deadline can reveal a first clip.
Actress and TV personality Marina Persona plays the titular Isabel, a sommelière in São Paulo’s fine-dining scene, who dreams of escaping her controlling boss and opening her own wine bar, where she decides what goes in the glass.
Flying in the face of male arrogance and the city’s penchant for beer and Brazil’s national drink, the caipirinha, Isabel opens a small neighborhood wine, called Os Rejeitados (The Rejects) and specializing in natural wine… what could possibly go wrong?
Klinger’s homecoming film, after many years spent living in Chicago, is a love letter to his native city and wine.
“I got into wine during the pandemic because there was nothing to do, and I discovered there were a lot of women in the wine world, which I found vibrant and interesting,” he says.
He suggests that Brazil is one of the few markets where wine consumption is on the rise.
“What’s happening in Brazil is people, especially people in cities, are switching from beer and hard liquor over to wine. If you’re drinking less, drink something memorable, like an artisanal made wine.”
Oscar-winning I’m Still Here producer Rodrigo Teixeira produces under his RT Features banner. The pair first met when Klinger was “sofa-hopping” in New York in the 2010s, and Teixeira was trying to get Frances Ha off the ground.
Isabel is among half a dozen projects by produced by Teixeira due to hit the festival circuit this year, including Bowls of Hell, which just played at Rotterdam, and James Gray’s Paper Tiger, which is tipped for Cannes.
The film is sold by Paris-based Urban Sales.