About Twelve (2014)

Juana a los 12

2014 | Argentina | Martín Shanly | ★★★

Driven by Rosario Shanly's compellingly enigmatic central performance, Argentinian actor Martín Shanly's directorial debut, About Twelve, provides an often fascinating, if never entirely convincing, portrait of a young girl suffering, both academically and socially, through early adolescence.

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"Twelve-year-old Juana goes to a British school on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, where she fails both socially and academically. A week away from the exams that will determine her future in the institution, she is surrounded by the same routine; going to class and trying to pull her social life back together, with useless attempts in between. Juana goes through these strange days apparently feeling indifferent towards the situation." TMDb

Dog Lady (2015)

La mujer de los perros

2015 | Argentina | Laura Citarella & Verónica Llinás | ★★★

Featuring very little dialogue and almost no plot, Laura Citarella and Verónica Llinás's mildly diverting Dog Lady is an Argentinian observational slice-of-life drama about a woman (played by co-director Llinás) living on the margins of human society.

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"An existentialist fable about a woman who lives with a pack of dogs on the very edge of the populated world, with minimal contact with other people. The seasons come and go. On life and survival, love and death. Dog Lady finds in the outstanding performance of Verónica Llinás (also co-director) an enigmatic, quietly potent screen presence able to challenge the pillars of our society without need of words." Mubi

Ostende (2011)

2011 | Argentina | Laura Citarella | ★★★★

Anchored by the sensitive performance of Laura Paredes, Laura Citarella's formally elegant, gently sensuous Ostende is a low-key, observational, almost plotless Argentinian seaside mystery, packed with unaccountably alluring sights and sounds.

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"When a young woman wins a radio contest, her prize is four days in a hotel in Ostende, a seaside town by the Atlantic coast in the province of Buenos Aires. Only it’s not high season, so the beach proves blustery, the hotel is pretty much empty and she doesn’t have much to do while she waits for her boyfriend to join her. So she listens to the stories of a friendly local waiter and watches the comings and goings of an older man and the two women who appear to be with him." TMDb

The Parrot and the Swan (2013)

El loro y el cisne

2013 | Argentina | Alejo Moguillansky | ★★★★

Alejo Moguillansky's disarmingly playful The Parrot and the Swan is an Altmanesque comedy about dance and film-making that slowly morphs into something more intimate and affecting, featuring enjoyably odd formal choices, amusing filmic references, and pleasing low-key performances.

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"In his new film, Alejo Moguillansky baldly and skillfully articulates the world of dance –specifically, the shooting of a documentary about a series of ballets– with the story of a break-up and a romance." Mubi

Castro (2009)

2009 | Argentina | Alejo Moguillansky | ★★★★

Alejo Moguillansky's discomfortingly entertaining, Becket-inspired Castro is an absurdist existential comedy-thriller, featuring nonsensical plotting, incongruous scoring, and game perfromances from Edgardo Castro, Julia Martínez Rubio, Esteban Lamothe, et al.

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"Four characters are looking for a man called Castro, but we don’t know why. For some mysterious reason, Castro is running. He has left his life behind, and survives by hiding in a room in a small city. He is basically alone, but someone has appeared in his life, Celia. She is young, beautiful, and sometimes cruel." TMDb

The Human Surge (2016)

El auge del humano

2016 | Argentina | Eduardo Williams | ★★★★

Composed of long, naturally lit, hand-held tracking shots, affectlessly capturing the mundanity of 21st century twenty-something life, Eduardo Williams's ambitious, three-continent spanning The Human Surge proves unaccountably engrossing.

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"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." TMDb

Balnearios (2002)

2002 | Argentina | Mariano Llinás | ★★★

Mariano Llinás's mildly diverting, sporadically entertaining Balnearios is an episodic, anthropological docu-essay about the strange nature of Argentinian seaside resorts, featuring wry narration and generally stimulating archival material.

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"Lifeguards, luxury hotels from early XXth Century, mermaids, sea animals and sand castles gather in this labyrinthine essay. A “documentary” about balnearios, Argentine bath resorts and the idea of cities dedicated exclusively to idleness, empty along the winter months and crowded in the summer." Mubi

The Idea of a Lake (2016)

La idea de un lago

2016 | Argentina / Switzerland | Milagros Mumenthaler | ★★★★

Swiss-Argentine director Milagros Mumenthaler's gorgeously crafted The Idea of a Lake is an elegiac yet warm and sensuous Argentinian film about memory and loss, featuring bold, imaginative imagery and sensitive performances.

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"Inès, a professional photographer, decides to complete a book she is working on before she gives birth to her first child. This photography project, related to the memories of her childhood, always brings her back to the same place: the family home in southern Argentina that shaped her youth and forged her character. It also contains the only photo Inès still has of her with her father, before he disappeared as a victim of the military dictatorship. This photo is the starting point of a jigsaw puzzle of fragmentary memories about the relationships Inès had with her mother and her brother." TMDb