From an Oscar win to producing Moria, Barreda and a film about trans sex workers

Armando Bo receives Clarín at his production company in Buenos Aires, half a block from River Plate’s Monumental Stadium. The Oscar-winning co-writer of Birdman is now producing Moria, a series, and Barreda, a film, while preparing the next stage of Las malas, which he has just finished directing.

Las malas is his new film about trans sex workers. Bo says he completed the shoot a month ago and is now editing it, six years after he first began developing the project. Barreda has taken even longer: he wanted to start writing it 15 years ago.

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My first steps were within advertising, which was a completely different world from what I had experienced, namely my father’s and grandfather’s perspective, which was cinema.

Bo comes from one of Argentina’s best-known film families. He is the son of Víctor Bo and grandson of Armando Bo, and his great-grandfather Silvestre Machinandiarena was one of the owners of Estudios San Miguel. His production company, About Entertainment, operates like a large coworking office, with long tables, laptops and rooms assigned to different productions.

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There has to be something a little crazy that one has absorbed, this passion for telling something, and pushing forward, because it is always against the odds.

He says his first professional steps came in advertising, a world different from the cinema tradition of his father and grandfather. That “double life” allowed him to support his desire to tell stories and gave him the freedom to pursue the projects that interested him.

For Bo, producing begins with a powerful urge to tell a story, even when the process is difficult and takes years. He also says his characteristic hat has a practical purpose: it makes him look dressed up while keeping his unruly curls under control.

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I don't live from this because it is a job, there is a passion, there is a desire.