Parrandas

Runtime: 75'

Expected release: September 2026

Production stage: Post-Production

Budget: €380,000 (100% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents / Distributors, Buyers

Synopsis:

In a Cuban village where Christmas transforms into a dazzling yet perilous pyrotechnic battle, young Lazarito eagerly prepares to join the fiery tradition that scarred him as a child, navigating the tension between communal euphoria and the haunting risks of the festival’s dangerous splendor.

Director’s Profile:

Constance Chaput-Raby is captivated by the documentary genre, which she sees as a celebration of slowness and risk-taking. She is drawn to the new forms of storytelling in moving images and believes that, whether fiction or documentary, everything is cinema. She is currently developing two feature films: Live Free and Die, about the murder of her mother in Mount Washington, New Hampshire, and Parrandas, which explores a Cuban village with a rich tradition of pyrotechnics. Her previous medium-length film, En Éclaireuses, was featured in the 2020 Visions du Réel Media Library.

Producer’s Profile:

Isabelle Grignon-Francke – film producer, director and co-founder of Club Video – is currently working on her first theatrical feature films. She has produced over 10 short films (Mothers and Monsters, Ain’t No Time for Women) and continues to develop new ones. She also produced two television documentaries: Les Collectionneurs (Sarra El Abed), shot in Egypt, exploring the archiving of Arabic music, and Virage Vert (Amélie Hardy), about regulatory barriers to green innovation. As a director, she released The Sparkle in November 2023 (New York Times, RIDM, Hot Docs, Full Frame), a short documentary on Quebec’s itinerant fairground workers. Isabelle is passionate about intimate stories, international projects, and narrative ethics.