argentinian films – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

OUR LAND – Review by Sarah Ward

April 21, 2026April 26, 2026 Sarah Ward argentinian films, Chuschagasta Indigenous community, colonization, Dario Luis Amín, Javier Chocobar, José Valivieso, lucrecia martel, Luis Humberto Gómez, María Alché, Nuestra Tierra, Our Land, Tucumán province

It feels both incomplete and inadequate to label Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) ‘true crime’, even if the label fits Argentine director Lucrecia Martel’s first-ever feature-length non-fiction film. A very real wrongdoing, the 2009 murder of Javier Chocobar from the Tucumán Province’s Indigenous Chuschagasta community, drives the documentary. Martel chronicles the nine-years-later court proceedings, accused and witness testimony included. A keen sense of justice’s selective blindness, of its imperfections at best and miscarriages at worst, remains an unshakeable presence. This engrossing and important documentary is unmistakably another of Martel’s movies to interrogate colonialism in her homeland. It is extraordinary.

Reviews

OUR LAND – Review by Diane Carson

April 21, 2026April 26, 2026 Diane Carson argentinian films, Chuschagasta Indigenous community, colonization, Dario Luis Amín, Javier Chocobar, José Valivieso, lucrecia martel, Luis Humberto Gómez, Nuestra Tierra, Our Land, Tucumán province

Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel interrogates the 2009 murder of Javier Chocobar in her documentary Our Land, also titled Landmarks and, in its original Spanish, Nuestra Tierra. However, this is no ordinary investigation, for no question exists concerning Chocobar’s killer. Rather, Martel’s searing analysis places historical and contemporary expropriation of Indigenous Argentinian lands squarely at the center of her examination of events, past and present, leading up to and the catalyst for the killing.

Movie of the Week

MOVIE OF THE WEEK November 7, 2025: BELÉN

November 2, 2025November 6, 2025 Jennifer Merin amazon studios, argentinian films, Belén, Camila Plaate, Dolores Fonzi, false conviction, motw, Movie of the Week, reproductive rights, Soledad Deza, truth-based

Based on a true story from the 2010s about a woman accused of illegal abortion and murder in Argentina, director Dolores Fonzi’s powerful drama Belén (adapted from Ana Correa’s book Somos Belén) couldn’t feel more timely if you ripped it straight out of today’s headlines. It’s simultaneously an impassioned plea for women’s bodily autonomy and a call to arms against the beliefs and institutions that make such a plea necessary in the first place.

Reviews

BELÉN – Review by Loren King

October 27, 2025November 1, 2025 Loren King argentinian films, Belén, Camila Plaate, Dolores Fonzi, false conviction, reproductive rights, Soledad Deza, truth-based

This powerhouse film couldn’t be more timely which makes it both urgent and enraging. Director and star Dolores Fonzi’s Belen immediately draws the viewer into the shocking case of a young woman (Camila Plaate)from the Argentina provinces who, before Argentina passed a law legalizing abortion, suffers a miscarriage while being treated for abdominal pain in a local hospital. A scene where police barge into the hospital room while she’s being medically treated and handcuff and arrest her as she cries out for her mother will be jarring for US viewers in the post-Dobbs era.

Festivals Reviews

THE CURRENTS (NYFF 2025) – Review by Margaret Barton-Fumo

October 5, 2025October 11, 2025 Margaret Barton-Fumo argentinian films, Esteban Bigliardi, Isabel Aimé González-Sola, Milagros Mumenthaler, NYFF 2025, The Currents

Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Currents is an ambitious, at times convoluted feature, one that often reflects the complexities of women’s inner lives. Mumenthaler’s perspective is consistently observational, going so far as to mimic the path of the human eye. Her vision is compelling; she is an artist and a feminist with a promising career ahead of her. Kudos to Mumenthaler for playing with the medium and daring to link the primary character’s story into a larger community of friends and strangers, creating a fascinating portrait of a bustling Buenos Aires in the process.

Reviews

MOST PEOPLE DIE ON SUNDAYS – Review by Diane Carson

June 11, 2025June 14, 2025 Diane Carson argentinian films, Iair Said, Most People Die on Sundays

In Argentinian director Iair Said’s Most People Die on Sundays, David, a middle-class, overweight, gay Jewish man, finds that life poses one hurdle after another. Bad weather delays his flight from Europe to Buenos Aires for his uncle’s funeral after David’s taken all his sleeping pills. Once home, exhausted, he offers several times to drive friends and relatives to their destinations but is immediately reminded he doesn’t have a license. Addressing that, David hires an instructor and then crashes into a tree as he quite unsuccessfully attempts to prove his expertise. David has an uphill battle before him in Most People Die on Sundays.

Reviews

CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT- Review by Nadine Whitney

July 2, 2024July 5, 2024 Nadine Whitney argentinian films, Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, Horacio Anibal Marassi, Mónica Villa, Noemi Ron, Silvia Mackenzie, Silvia Porro, Tomas Gomez Bustillo

Chronicles of a Wandering Saint is sweet, funny, deadpan, and magical. A tale about love after life and the mysteries of the day to day being just as profound as those of the divine. Horacio Marassi’s performance is unspeakably lovely and achingly sad, and Mónica Villa is glorious as a woman seeing the world anew once she is not ‘in’ it. A gentle comedy about the small and big things which make living sacred – the most profound being truly seen and loved.

Festivals Reviews

PAULA (Melbourne IFF 2023) – Review by Nadine Whitney

August 14, 2023August 14, 2023 Nadine Whitney argentinian films, Daniela De Francesco, Florencia Wehbe, Lucia Castro, Melbourne IFF 2023, Paula, Virginia Shultess

Paula does a generally good job of explaining the insidious nature of eating disorders and how every aggression, micro and macro, fuels them. It isn’t just aggression that fuels eating disorders but also the community that awards thinness. Wehbe turns that community into a group of bloggers (and if you look into the internet there are many pro-anorexia sites), but it’s really the whole of society that does it. The film is didactic but necessary. Wehbe’s opening with the teenage girls on the first day of school is actually a pean to their burgeoning loveliness, it proves that they are beautiful despite acne or extra pounds.

Reviews

TRENQUE LAUQUEN – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

April 10, 2023April 15, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas argentinian films, Laura Citarella, Laura Paredes, luxbox, Trenque Lauquen

Two men, Rafael and Ezequiel, are searching for a woman. Her disappearance is low-key; not requiring police involvement, she appears to have left by her own choice, yet the men are left bewildered and drive around the Trenque Lauquen region just outside of Buenos Aires chasing up lead after thin lead. An unmissable cinema event, Trenque Lauquen is an extraordinarily confident film that speaks to our desire for solvable mysteries in a world full of people that are far more complex than simple deciphering permits.

Reviews

ARGENTINA, 1985 – Review by Jennifer Green

December 7, 2022December 11, 2022 Jennifer Green Alejandra Flechner, amazon prime, argentinian films, Julio César Strassera, Luis Moreno Ocampo, Mariano Llinás, oscars, Peter Lanzani, Ricardo Darín, Santiago Mitre, truth-based

Argentina’s nominee to this year’s International Feature Film Oscar, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, is an emotional tour-de-force, a film based on historical events whose dramatic tale is punctuated by both moments of humor and details of horrific human rights abuses that took place under that country’s military dictatorship and so-called “Dirty War,” between 1976 and 1983. The film is about the landmark trial that prosecuted the former president and military leaders for those abuses, ensuring democracy in Argentina

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