Discoveries from Argentina World Cinema

A film about the plains as an abyss and the night as a hiding place where darkness seems to keep a blazing secret and carry the imminence of an event perpetually postponed. An inquiry about the imaginary line that separates the provinces of Buenos Aires and La Pampa.

A conscript spends his final Sunday with a host family in Comodoro Rivadavia before he leaves for war.

“What would my classmates think if they found out I was Jewish when, in most of our classes, something was said against us,” Mariette Diamant asks herself. For more than seven decades, this woman -who escaped with her parents from Nazi-occupied France during WWII- would hide the Jewish origins of her family for fear of retaliation. But at 90, Mariette decides to shed light on that past that haunts her, tell her story and reveal her true identity with the sole aim of freeing herself from those wounds that won’t heal, from that pain that never ceases. In the last part of a documentary trilogy about the Holocaust’s ghosts in Argentina, writer-director Poli Martínez Kaplun seizes one of the most powerful tools of cinema— the capability of turning into the perfect counteroffensive for omission.

The quiet walk of a family is interrupted by the presence of a latent danger. This photo documentary reconstructs the spaces of the Parque de la Memoria through its works of art, while evoking the ever-present horror of the last military dictatorship.

Exaltation and participation throughout the country of the Argentine boy scouts.

Two soldiers escape from their enemies. They talk about why they are persecuted. The slightest doubt. The oldest seems to go crazy with the music he hums. The minor, scared, shoots. He understands why they escaped, he fell prey to the lie and changed sides.

In this film, which takes place for the most part inside a house that seems to be isolated from any contemporaneity, except for the news coming from television and the ringing of cell phones, Perrone shows the routines of his characters as rites of stagnation: the novel at full volume, the haircuts, the text messages. In the house of Los actos cotidianes there is a certain refuge in the family in front of a world that is guessed hostile, too wide and foreign.

A married woman tries to start a new life but discovers that desire can be a dangerous path with no return. (Inspired by the legend of "El bolsadito" from San José del Rincón; Santa Fe, Argentina).

On his first night out after receiving the key to his house, a young man walks into a club where an orchestra of young ladies is playing.

Two children work very hard to buy the ball they dream of so much. When they manage to buy it, it falls inside a house, and the owner, angry, destroys it. From then on the boys try to locate the mysterious adult.

A researcher sets out to find the Antichrist, unaware that he will discover a man fighting against a sect of blind people.

When the worst global financial crisis in history breaks out, a group of marginal homeless people face the dictatorship of the last society still standing. The bums want to restore the system, the one they so despise, so they can put their camp under a bridge.

Film based on the sonnet by the same name, written by Evaristo Carriego.

Enrique, a gray office worker who lives a marriage already without passion begins to rethink his life when he receives an anonymous who says that his wife deceives him.

Short film by Farsa Producciones based on "Batman" by Tim Burton.

At a Halloween party, a sinister clown that emerges from a tube television manipulates the guests’ minds toward self-destructive behaviors.

Viento, Alan, and Dala are a trio who produce amateur gay porn. During a night together, after a long day's work, Viento discovers with disappointment how the boundaries of consent are blurred in the passage from fiction to reality.

Cristina spent the last thirty years of her life in France, where she arrived as a political refugee. She decided to take the route from Paris to Grenoble to attend a barbecue, a ritual organized by Latin American exiles since 1976 to thank the French people for their hospitality. Alicia, Jaime, Juan Carlos, and Jorge, some of those who shared her early years of exile, are waiting for her there. Together they will retrace the path that unites the past and present of a generation marked by pain.

Documentary about Estela de Carlotto, President of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who in her home, amidst a few photos and many memories, reconstructs her family's history for her grandson, Guido. She speaks, looking into the camera and addressing her grandson directly. He has yet to recover his true identity and should have turned 33 this year. She tells him about his parents' lives and her own life, as if assuring him that even if he never sees it, he will have the chance to relive his story, just as she would have liked to tell it to him.

Short experimental film by Enrique Butti made at the prestigious Universidad Nacional del Litoral.

Two friends walk together through the city and through their moods, ignoring everything that happens around them; the universe closes for each one in her lament, in her monologue of love. In this recurrence the reason for the pain is emptied and only the trace, the desolation, remains.

At the last moment a few words can summarize all our lives.

Made between 2021 and 2022, the medium-length film pays homage to the eponymous work by artist León Ferrari, a literary collage created between 1965 and 1967 in the context of the Vietnam War: it replicates its method through a montage of archives from the confinement caused by the pandemic. What do we do with the information debris that passes through our bodies? From this question, the filmmaker composes an ecology of the image/archive, recycling alienating, banal, ridiculous, excessive, and/or hateful spam in the face of other voices of resistance.

A tribute to Virginia, a 23-year-old girl who apparently committed suicide in Ibiza. Excerpts from her letters to Narcisa, written on the walls, appear in the film as a leitmotif.

Zew was born in a prison camp on the Island of Rhodes in 1941 during World War II. Psychoanalyst and "magician's apprentice", he looks for a way to tell his grandchildren his story, in a Buenos Aires where the lives of other immigrants converge.

A shepherd leads its sheeps to the top of the mountain in search of a special moment.

Juana Rouco Buela had a dream at the beginning of the 20th century: to liberate women from an economic system and a patriarchal authority to which they were subjected. She found in anarchism the space for her struggle. Thus, she laid the foundation for women's rights today.

The visit of wealthy teenagers on a charity mission disrupts the children of a poor rural village.

In a not-so-distant future where death is no longer definitive, a body whose resources are exhausted can have its consciousness survive in a digital limbo, then come back in a different body. That doesn’t come free of charge, however. After 100 years as data, Rana returns to life in a makeshift body, the only one he can pay for. He returns to find his son, now an old man, who defies the system by choosing to die naturally and disappear forever.

Juan, a wandering gaucho, decides he wants to recover everything he's lost. Upon returning to his former home, he challenges the man who had won his ranch in a game of truco to a rematch.

Floggers: a passing fad or a new culture that will endure? Another strategy to induce teenagers to consume excessively? These questions are unraveled in this documentary by the protagonists of the phenomenon: shopkeepers, hairdressers, teachers, and, of course, the floggers themselves.

Embarcación is a town located in northern Salta, 270 kilometers from the provincial capital. Like all the towns in the area, it was built next to the railroad. During the 1990s, following poor administration, it fell into decline and the town lost its main source of employment. However, its customs, ties, and above all its history never faded. In this documentary, we take a tour of the community of Embarcación with José, a curious boy who discovers how his history is affected by echoes of the past.

Eva, her son Luchi and her sister Teresa vacation in the usual town. It is Eva’s first trip after her separation, but the first night they end up in the emergency room because Luchi has an accident. Between the doctor’s reprimands and shared laughter, the sisters confess their fears.

The Dalton brothers, fourth generation of a circus family, have traveled the world experiencing both success and failure. Today in Catalonia, a new generation will host the Carpa Revolució, bringing the history of the circus to life, where magic, memories, and the future will take center stage.

Coco's Moon is a feature-length fiction film that tells the story of a man who falls in love with the Moon. What hidden desires manifest in a being who seeks love in the cosmos? A dramatic comedy that flirts with magical realism and absurdity, typical of the Selenophilic relationship of Coco -our protagonist- and the chaos in the family and social world.

Student documentary short film by director Carlos Vallina.

Throughout history, the debate over whether to preserve or demolish certain sculptural representations has become a favorite topic for analyzing power struggles in different societies. But it is in light of new philosophical studies on posthumanism that I am interested in thinking about representations: from their materiality and agency in the world. What kind of life do sculptures have? Marble, granite, bronze—are these materials that continue to act over time? And if so, what kind of action do they take? Observing monuments in the city is a form of dialogue with our most distant past. And it is these same stones that, throughout the century in Buenos Aires, have left their mark on our memory.

Filmed during a 12-day workshop in the Amazon rainforest of Peru under the mentorship of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, La presencia de lo ausente is intended to be a farewell letter, but on its journey it becomes an exercise in memory, time, trauma and the lack. The encounter with humidity, mosquitoes, the sound of a walkie-talkie and two surveyors triggers the memory and begins the contemplation.

Documentary about the last year of Raul Alfonsin's presidency, marked by extreme political tensions.

Ciro is a young boxer nicknamed El Búho who is preparing for his first fight after six years of waiting. The film reveals a boy's dreams of becoming an Argentine boxing legend.

Life and work of the controversial Argentine film director Jorge Polaco who questioned all moral institutions, exposing himself to the most scandalous media ridicule and risking his vulnerability. Is it possible to evade legitimation? Does the era of the algorithm allow that gap through which these singularities were previously filtered?

A group of students get lost in a zone where they can't escape, because crossing an invisible limit push them to go back. They survive several days, someone seems to have planned everything.

Short film directed by Hernán Sáez and starring Paulo Soria from FARSA Producciones.

A strange monument in the Pampa de Achala, Córdoba, holds a hidden meaning. Yet there are always those who are astonished and begin to ask questions. The answers ignite passions that lead us to the past and the future, and to the discovery that Argentina's aerospace history began in the breathtaking landscape of the High Peaks. A group of young people from the Traslasierra region and an experienced engineer recreate the historic feat that placed our country at the forefront of scientific development.

Inés spends her days at her father’s empty apartment. Without much to do, she receives a few visits and self-medicates with other people’s stories.

Rafael Corral, a 90-year-old man, has spent much of his life in a film archive. As the building is transformed by construction work, Rafael searches for an object that connects him to his past as a ballet dancer for Spanish singer Miguel de Molina. The film explores memory through a building, a man and cinema, walking the corridors of an archive and observing the fragility of the material and the hands that preserve it.

Documentary about the Trial for crimes against humanity known as La Perla, which focuses on the day of the sentence and how six protagonists of this judicial process live that event, the judge in the case, the prosecutor, a lawyer, a witness, the mother of a disappeared person and a journalist.

Mara, a lonely woman, lives in a dystopian, nocturnal and monotonous world that follows an endless cycle of work and consumption. She keeps a big secret, a small flame of fire locked in a metal box. But as each passing day the flame loses its intensity, she must develop an escape plan to keep it alive.

Someone is alone in the dark while something stalks them. The cold increases, and so does the desperation.