El aroma del pasto recién cortado

With a stable academic career, two loving kids and a marriage long grown cold, geology professor Natalia (Marina de Tavira) has little relief from the doldrums of middle age other than a quiet, intense longing for handsome grad student Gonzalo (Emanuel Parga). At the same university, brooding academic Pablo (Joaquín Furriel), sleepwalking through his own midlife malaise, begins an affair with free-spirited student Luciana (Verónica Gerez). As both characters yearn for connection within marriages long shaped by deafening silence and passive aggressive maneuvering, Pablo and Natalia must come to terms with the accumulated effects of their own fear, struggling against suffocating gender expectations and the weight of their secret lives, leading to a powerful moment of reckoning for each in this refreshingly honest and frank adult drama. Brilliantly using twin narratives that both mirror and diverge from one another, director and co-writer Celina Murga has crafted a raw and involved portrait of two lives at critical moments of change. Led by subtly powerful performances by de Tavira and Furriel, The Freshly Cut Grass is a candid look at the need for vulnerability, self-discovery and the joy of those unexpected moments of grace. (Tribeca Film Festival)