In the Sixties, the New Argentine Cinema amazed the world. It was movies made with minimal resources, perhaps close to Italian neorealism in substance and form. Later, through decades of persecution and dictatorships, films were a tool to show what was happening in the country. In that democracy, cinema flourished and expanded, winning Oscars and awards. There is no international festival that has not screened the work of directors like Lucrecia Martel, Pablo Trapero, and Lucía Puenzo, producers like Hernán Mussalupi, and actors like Ricardo Darín.
Today Argentine cinema is being dismembered as part of President Javier Milei’s effort to apply a “chainsaw” to public funding, and as a response to the market situation in which national films compete, without any protection against blockbusters. “Since 2000, Argentine cinema has gone into decline,” Carlos Pirovano, an economist by profession and director of the National Institute of Cinema and Cinematographic Arts INCAA, told the newspaper Los Andes. Films ranging from the Oscar-winning The Official Story and The Secret in Her Eyes, to Nine Queens and The Headless Woman, mean nothing to the bureaucrats, who ignore the recognition these films have achieved abroad and their importance as part of Latin American cultural heritage. “This is like burning books, that’s what they are doing,” Tato Moreno, director and producer from Mendoza, told The Film Verdict.
In support of Argentine cinema, the San Sebastian Festival, in association with the Argentine Film Academy and its director Hernán Findling, is organizing an In Focus meeting on Tuesday, September 24. Argentine producers, directors, and critics will participate in a symbolic “occupation” on the Kursaal Auditorium stairs. The Man Who Loved Flying Saucers by Diego Lerman (in competition) and the non-fiction feature Transfers by Nicolás Gil, about the flights on which dissidents disappeared during the dictatorship (in Special Screenings) will premiere that day. In total, the festival is presenting a total of 14 films produced in Argentina, proof that it is not in decline, but in danger of extinction.
With decree number 662/2024, INCAA, one of the most effective government organizations in Latin America which has supported all stages of cinema, from projects to sales, has cut out practically all support, starting with the screen quota for national cinema. It was established that each screen had to show a minimum of four Argentine films per year. “It was not eliminated, an appropriate quota will be established,” said Pirovano. Six months after the decree, it is still unknown what that quota will be.
For now, Ventana Sur, the very successful Ibero-American film market, moved from Buenos Aires to Montevideo under the protection of the ACAU, Agencia del Cine y el Audiovisual del Uruguay. “Those in charge of the basic sections of the market, among them Primer Corte, Blood Window, and Maquinitas, will remain the same,” the founder of Ventana Sur Bernardo Bergueret assured TFV.
