Florencia Wehbe

She was born in 1989, in Río Cuarto, in the Province of Córdoba -Argentina. She studied Cinema in Córdoba Capital. She has been working as an Art Director since 2011. She worked in several productions in the area of ​​direction. She was co-writer of PACKING HEAVY, by Darío Mascambroni.
MAYBE TOMORROW, the first feature film she directed, won the "Best Argentine Film" award at the La Plata Latin American Film Festival and "Best Director" at MAFICI. In 2017 Florencia won the project development contest “Raymundo Gleyzer” with the project of PAULA. The film won the Work in Progress Award in Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2021 and participated at BAFICI 2022, in the Argentine Competition Section.

Director’s statement

“We can remember many milestones in our lives with perfect clarity: our first menstruation, our first kiss, a fight or accident we had. Situations or anecdotes that made us grow or learn. But what was the exact moment when we learned that our bodies are not enough? When did our appearance become so important? Who taught us the concept of beauty, what tools did they use?
The construction of female beauty standards is a social, political and economic matter; it changes over the decades, but it always has the sole objective of bringing us down, of destroying our self-esteem little by little. The oppression and damage that the beauty business has inflicted over the years on society, especially on women, is immense and irreversible.
This film tells the story of Paula, a 14-year-old girl who must walk a lonely path in search of self-acceptance, in a society where female beauty standards are unattainable and where anorexia promises dangerous solutions.
This story was born from my need to recount my personal experiences and brushes with eating disorders, but during its development it took on an unusual magnitude when I realised how many women silently go through these same conflicts, infantilised by a society that chooses not to look where it hurts.
We are products of what is sold to us, and this is now truer than ever with social media promoting and selling bodies and magical solutions to non-existent problems. Generating more insecurities, more consumerism and more humiliation.
PAULA is a desperate, urgent, necessary cry; it is a breath of fresh air, a story that tells the beginning of a stigma that will leave scars in the body and in the mind, ghosts that will accompany us for the rest of our lives.”