A director tasked with turning two clashing egos into one prestige film finds the real drama happening off camera.
What is Official Competition about?
A wealthy businessman decides he wants a landmark work bearing his name and turns to filmmaker Lola Cuevas to deliver it. She assembles a pairing built for friction: a polished movie star used to adoring audiences, and a stage veteran devoted to a rougher, more demanding kind of craft. Neither respects the other's approach to acting, and Lola pushes both further than they expect, using strange exercises and pointed provocations to strip away their comfort. As rehearsals stretch on, old rivalries surface and each man's sense of his own legacy starts to wobble. The story watches what happens when vanity is deliberately provoked in the name of art, and whether anything honest survives the process.
About the cast
Penélope Cruz leads as the uncompromising director, working alongside Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez as the two actors caught in her experiment. José Luis Gómez, Manolo Solo, Nagore Aranburu, Irene Escolar and Pilar Castro round out the ensemble in supporting roles. The cast plays the comedy straight, letting the absurdity of the exercises land through commitment rather than mugging.
Context & significance
Official Competition comes from directors Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn, an Argentine filmmaking duo known for pointed satire aimed at the art world and its egos. This 2021 Argentina-Spain co-production runs 114 minutes and sits comfortably between comedy and drama, using an absurd premise to ask real questions about vanity, collaboration and what a director is willing to do to get a performance. Much of its humor comes from process rather than punchlines: the rehearsal exercises, the power games between director and cast, and the gap between how artists present themselves publicly and how they behave once the pressure is on. It rewards viewers who enjoy comedy built on discomfort as much as jokes.
Watching Official Competition on Ktime
Official Competition streams on K-Time with a Farsi dub and Farsi subtitles, so viewers can choose whichever fits their evening. The page itself is free to browse; watching the title requires a K-Time account login. K-Time's Farsi-first interface is built with the Iranian diaspora in mind, from menus to search.