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Essential Argentine Cinema

La Ciénaga (2001)
Lucrecia Martel · 32 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Amid the sweltering summer heat in northern Argentina, two middle-class families retreat to a crumbling country estate and a modest townhouse, where strained relationships, simmering tensions, and the presence of children and servants quietly expose the fractures of family life. Between idle days, gossip, and unspoken desires, the boundaries of class, tradition, and faith are reflected in their everyday interactions.
The Headless Woman (2008)
Lucrecia Martel · 22 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
After running into something with her car, Vero experiences a particular psychological state. She realizes she might have killed someone.
Zama (2016)
Lucrecia Martel · 18 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Metrograph, Strand Releasing Amazon Channel
In a remote South American colony in the late 18th century, officer Zama of the Spanish crown waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. He suffers small humiliations and petty politicking as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia.
The Hour of the Furnaces (1968)
Octavio Getino, Fernando Solanas · 15 critic votes
An impassioned three-part documentary of the liberation struggle waged throughout Latin America, using Argentina as a historical example of the imperialist exploitation of the continent. Part I: Neo-Colonialism and Violence is a historical, geographic, and economic analysis of Argentina. Part II: An Act For Liberation examines the ten-year reign of Juan Perón (1945-55) and the activities of the Peronist movement after his fall from power. Part III: Violence and Liberation studies the role of violence in the national liberation process and constitutes a call for action.
La Flor (2018)
Mariano Llinás · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Hoopla
An enormous effort of narrative complexity made up of six independent, successive stories, connected by the same four actresses living very different experiences in very different universes…
Invasión (1968)
Hugo Santiago · 6 critic votes
Hearing the summons from an elderly man, a volunteer troop of middle-aged men gather to defend their country from dark foreign invaders.
Romance of Aniceto and Francisca (1967)
Leonardo Favio · 4 critic votes
Aniceto is used to being lonely. When Francisca offers him her love, his personal limitations and little miseries arise.
Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf (1975)
Leonardo Favio · 4 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Bloodstream · Streaming on Fandor Amazon Channel, Hoopla, Night Flight Plus
The Mighty One offers Nazareno Cruz all the wealth in the world if he agrees to abandon his beloved; otherwise, the curse that supposedly weighs on him will be fulfilled.
The Holy Girl (2004)
Lucrecia Martel · 4 critic votes
Streaming on MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel
Amalia is an adolescent girl who is caught in the throes of her emerging sexuality and her deeply held passion for her Catholic faith. These two drives mingle when the visiting Dr. Jano takes advantage of a crowd to get inappropriately close to the girl. Repulsed by him but inspired by an inner burning, Amalia decides it is her God-given mission to save the doctor from his behavior, and she begins to stalk Dr. Jano, becoming a most unusual voyeur.
Juan Moreira (1973)
Leonardo Favio · 3 critic votes
Free on The Roku Channel
In the late nineteenth century, the mule driver Juan Moreira is a good gaucho and worker who, like many others, is subjected to abuse and humiliation by the powerful, either the police or landowners.
Nine Queens (2000)
Fabián Bielinsky · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV
Two con artists try to swindle a stamp collector by selling him a sheet of counterfeit rare stamps, the "nine queens".
Extraordinary Stories (2008)
Mariano Llinás · 2 critic votes
X arrives in a small town and witnesses a violent act; Z takes the job of a dead manager and discovers that he had a notebook written in code and a map; H is hired to go down a river and investigate a series of mysterious monoliths built on the shore.
The Human Surge (2016)
Eduardo Williams · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Fandor Amazon Channel, Hoopla, Philo
Buenos Aires. Exe, 25 years old, has just lost his job and is not looking for another one. His neighbors and friends seem as odd to him as they always do. Online, he meets Alf, a boy from Mozambique who is also bored with his job and who is about to follow Archie, another boy who has run away into the jungle. Through the dense vegetation of the forest, Archie tracks ants back to their nest. One of them wanders off course and comes across Canh, a Filipino, sitting on top of a giant heap of earth and who is about to go back to his strange, beautiful home town, where he too has a miserable job.
Chronicle of a Boy Alone (1965)
Leonardo Favio · 1 critic vote
The story of a delinquent eleven-year-old orphan in authoritarian Argentina.
Coup de Grâce (1969)
Ricardo Becher · 1 critic vote
During the day, a non-conformist young man and his friends try to make a living by doing odd jobs; at night, they sink at the Moderno Bar.
The Dependent (1969)
Leonardo Favio · 1 critic vote
Fernandez is a lonely man leading a lonely life. All he does is work for an old man in a hardware store. But all that changes, when he meets the girl of his dreams... and her family.
The Traitors (1973)
Raymundo Gleyzer · 1 critic vote
Based on a true story, the film narrates the life of a fictitious Peronist union leader who, after years of militancy, gains power in the union during the 1960s and gradually becomes a corrupt bureaucrat.
Passacaglia and Fugue (1975)
Jorge Honik · 1 critic vote
A movie filmed almost entirely in the interior of a house on the outskirts of S.C. de Bariloche, on the shores of Nahuel Huapi Lake, over the course of one full winter and the beginning of a spring. The camera, through frame-by-frame tracking and panning shots, goes along revealing furniture, corners, objects and books, using rails in the first instance and a calibrated disk mounted on a tripod in the second. The house vibrates with its own life, revealing almost ghostlike traces and vestiges while the human presence is barely suggested. These shots alternate with others of the landscape: a lake, snow, bushes rattled by the wind, the passing of the seasons, external signs that accentuate the solitude of the interior spaces.
Workshop (1975)
Narcisa Hirsch · 1 critic vote
on the image of a collage on the wall, the voice of a woman describes a man the interior space of a workshop that is not seen.
Soñar, soñar (1976)
Leonardo Favio · 1 critic vote
Mario, “el Rulo,” is a wanderer who travels the country giving artistic performances. One day he passes through the town of Carlos, a municipal employee who dreams of being an artist. A friendship is born between the two of them, and Carlos leaves it all behind to follow Mario.
Ofrenda (1978)
Claudio Caldini · 1 critic vote
Short film that shows daisies throughout the day with music as an accompaniment.
The Pioneers (1979)
Narcisa Hirsch · 1 critic vote
Documentary about Jewish colonizers in Argentina.
Time for Revenge (1981)
Adolfo Aristarain · 1 critic vote
Two coworkers decide to blackmail the corrupt demolition company they work for by setting up a fake accident.
The Circular Scene (1982)
Claudio Caldini · 1 critic vote
The silhouettes of a couple in the window were filmed with few directions for the protagonists. They suggested the synthesis of cinematic space and the universality of their figures. The camera draws attention to moments, gestures, and actions, all inserted into the parentheses of a fade-in/fade-out. Cinema rediscovered as an effective memory machine.
Long Live the Hobos (1995)
Ana Poliak · 1 critic vote
The film tells the story of an imigrant to Argentina who works for the railway company of this land. Being a witness to the history of the land of silver in this century the film is also a shortcut of the changes in Argentina during the last 100 years.
The Blonds (2003)
Albertina Carri · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
In 1977, when she was four years old, Albertina Carri's parents vanished without a trace, victims of Argentina's brutal military junta. In this fresh and politically daring film, the young Argentinian filmmaker attempts to unravel the mystery, piecing together her memories and fantasies in a quest to understand her parents' untimely fate.
Los muertos (2004)
Lisandro Alonso · 1 critic vote
Vargas, a 54 year old man, gets out of jail in the province of Corrientes, Argentina. Once released, he wants to find his now adult daughter, who lives in a swampy and remote area. A deep mystery surrounds him.
XXY (2007)
Lucía Puenzo · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on MUBI, Kanopy, MUBI Amazon Channel
Alex, an intersexed 15-year-old, is living as a girl, but she and her family begin to wonder whether she's emotionally a boy when another teenager's sexual advances bring the issue to a head. As Alex faces a final decision regarding her gender, she meets both hostility and compassion.
Gloomy Eyes (2019)
Fernando Maldonado, Jorge Tereso · 1 critic vote
Poor Gloomy. It’s 1983, and the fact that he’s a zombie makes him an outcast. Hiding out in the forest, Gloomy has his sights on a human girl. But her uncle happens to be one of the most feared zombie-hunters in the land. Set in a surreal universe that owes a debt to the visual stylings of Tim Burton, this awardwinning VR experience pairs surreal animation with a darkly humorous take on zombie-human relations.
Official Competition (2021)
Gastón Duprat, Mariano Cohn · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, AMC+
Jan, a mysterious character haunted by a deep feeling of guilt, tries to get Violeta back, a youth love he lost 20 years ago, with a sickening plan.
Smog in Your Heart (2022)
Lucia Séles · 1 critic vote
The maximum nonsense of life plays with the feelings of the owner and the employees of a tennis complex.
weak rangers (2022)
Lucia Séles · 1 critic vote
The final match of the "tennis trilogy" sharpens the humor to the maximum and unleashes all the dramas -some of them, even beaten to death- between the owner and the employees of the complex, with strange melancholic notes and new characters that join the ordeal in its last station.
The Delinquents (2023)
Rodrigo Moreno · 1 critic vote
Streaming on MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel
Morán works as a clerk in a bank in Buenos Aires. He is as good as invisible to his colleagues. Over dinner with his colleague Román, Morán tells him that he stole exactly $650,000, which is exactly double what he would have made until his retirement. He plans to turn himself in, but not before offering Román to split the money if agrees to hide it for the duration of his incarceration.

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Essential Argentine Cinema

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