Argentine director Lucila Mariani debuts genre-leaning feature ‘The Days Off’ at Locarno, exploring lucid dreaming and “that internet”

Lucila Mariani’s first feature film, ‘The Days Off’ (Los días libres), will premiere as part of the Swiff film festival in Locarno, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The release arrives with an exclusive trailer positioned as a “love letter” to an online world that no longer exists in the same form, centered on a teenager’s attempt to access “other realities” through lucid dreaming.

The Hollywood Reporter describes the plot as a genre-leaning exploration that mixes horror elements with a character-driven focus on identity. The central figure, a teenager, uses lucid dreaming as a way to look beyond ordinary life, framing the film’s premise around the boundary between what is lived and what is imagined.

Mariani is credited in the report as an Argentine filmmaker, and the story is framed by THR as connecting questions of female identity and technology. While the trailer language emphasizes an internet nostalgia, the coverage also links that theme to the film’s broader concern with how digital life and modern interfaces shape the experiences, anxieties and self-conceptions of young people.

The Hollywood Reporter’s presentation of the project highlights it as Mariani’s first feature, marking a shift from shorter-form work or early career projects (not further detailed in the available record) into a full-length narrative built around the mechanics of lucid dreaming. In the coverage, the filmmaker’s approach is described as both intimate and speculative, using sleep, perception and fear to examine what the internet can promise and what it can distort.

The film is scheduled to be shown as part of Swiff’s Locarno programming, with the trailer release serving as the main public-facing milestone tied to the festival appearance. Specific screening dates, venues within the festival, and any competitive or awards status were not included in the provided record.

As the premiere window approaches, the release positions ‘The Days Off’ as a culture-facing entry point for festival audiences interested in contemporary genre and coming-of-age themes. For viewers, the trailer suggests a blend of suspense and introspection, with the internet nostalgia functioning as thematic material rather than a standalone setting.

The Hollywood Reporter report also frames the film in terms of its emotional stance toward online culture, describing the work as a response to an internet that “longer quite exists” in the way people once recognized it. That framing underscores why the film’s subject matter is likely to resonate with audiences who experienced early internet communities during their formative years, while still presenting the story through the more immediate lens of adolescence and dreamlike disorientation.