Luis Puenzo became the first Argentine Oscar winner in 1986 for his film, The Official Story. Now his daughter Lucía Puenzo is poised for her shot with XXY, as Eric D. Snider told you about in October. The film is making waves as Argentina picked it for their Oscar submission, it won the Critics Week Grand Prize at Cannes, it's got a Spanish Goya nomination, and now Variety reports that it leads the nominations for the 2007 Sur awards from the Argentine Film Arts and Sciences Academy.

Puenzo's directorial debut has nabbed an impressive 13 out of 19 nominations at the awards, and the categories include best film, director, adapted screenplay, debut feature, and an acting nod for Inés Efron as revelation actress. This doesn't really come as a surprise. I reviewed the film at TIFF this year, and it's a solid feature, which shines with Efron's performance. I would be surprised if she doesn't nab this award, and if we don't see more from her in the near future. I bet the same can be said for Puenzo, since this is her debut feature.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Darín, who played Efron's father in the film, is up for lead actor in another movie, Nine Queens, and Julieta Díaz is up for lead actress for her role in Family Law. Other big nominees include The Aerial, a sci-fi fantasy from Esteban Sapir and Juan Taratuto's romcom, Who Says It's Easy. This will be the second ceremony held by the Academy.

When XXY opens, we're greeted with beautiful, undersea masses, each looking like they exist in their own floating world -- while still being attached to each other through waving, living cords. It's a stunning, yet sadly apt metaphor for the film, because while these are interconnected, the characters in Lucia Puenzo's film are anything but. They are struggling -- both to connect with each other and to uphold what they think is right. Unfortunately, the realm of what is 'right' is wavering and unclear. In the first scene, we see the start of an autopsy on a dead turtle. When the shell is removed, marine biologist Kraken (Ricardo Darín) sadly states that it was a girl. Unfortunately, his world isn't as cut and dry as the slain turtle's.

He has a kid named Alex -- wonderfully played by Inés Efron. Alex is a hermaphrodite who has been living through her adolescence as a girl. The family has moved around a lot, and it becomes clear that they've done so for the young kid's privacy and comfort. Alex's mother Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli), without talking to her husband, invites a surgeon and his family to visit and assess the situation -- with hopes that Alex will agree to have her penis removed and finally transition into one sex. What Suli doesn't realize is that Alex has stopped taking the prescribed hormones.

I come to praise an actor who should be better known. Charismatic yet seedy, Ricardo Darín dominated the thriller Nine Queens as an experienced con man caught up in the biggest caper of his career. He was sympathetic as a restaurant owner facing a mid-life crisis in the comedy Son of the Bride, superb as a family head under immense pressure in the drama Kamchatka and magnificent as a quiet taxidermist who gets in over his head in the crime drama The Aura. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Darín started acting at the tender age of 10 and has considerable experience on the stage and in a variety of television shows. He recently appeared in the drama XXY, which screened at Cannes and is currently playing in Argentina, and his next film will be released there on September 13.

The Sign features Darín as Corvalán, a "mediocre" private eye who gets involved in "a story of betrayal and ambitions," according to a synopsis by one of the film's production companies. The setting is 1952 Argentina -- the last days of Eva Perón -- and Corvalán is hired by a femme fatale to do a seemingly run-of-the-mill job. In the course of what should be a routine investigation, Corvalán begins to uncover "a violent plot of vengeance and ambitions." Despite the concerns expressed by his partner Santana, Corvalán keeps digging until his life is in danger. Julieta Díaz (Family Law) plays the mystery woman and Diego Peretti (It's Not You, It's Me) portrays Santana.

Director Eduardo Mignogna wrote the script and was in pre-production last fall when he passed away from cancer. Darín, who had worked with Mignogna previously (The Lighthouse, The Escape) and considered The Sign to be a dream project, felt a moral obligation to finish his friend's work, and so assumed the responsibility of directing as well as acting in the film. That makes it doubly worth seeking out, in my book.