Argentine cinema shines in San Sebastián despite Milei’s devastating attack | Cinema: premieres and criticism

What Argentine films with your government’s aid will arrive at theaters in 2026 and 2027? The quick response would be none, according to projects from Argentina in the industry meetings that sponsor in San Sebastián the work in progress (Development films): There is not one of that country, which does add six feature films and a medium -up in the different sections of this zinemaldia.

The reason for such a agorero future is Javier Milei, which leads a government that has emptied financing, and content, the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA), an agency that regulates cinema within the Ministry of Culture. Last year, the San Sebastián Festival held an act in support of Argentine filmmakers. In this edition the support is faced in another way, through programming, “as a way of certifying its quality and rewarding its career,” said José Luis Rebordinos, director of the contest.

The first to present his work at the festival has been Daniel Hendler. And twice: his 27 nights opened the contest and A loose end, which premiered in the past Mostra de Venice, is projected since Tuesday in the Latin Horizontes section. For the filmmaker, the future is depressing: “With what our cinema has achieved in the world and I see with penalty that, next year, it will be difficult for some Argentine film. What opens today are the titles that come from a previous period. It is a problem for the coming times,” says the actor and director, born in Montevideo, and who has developed his career between his country and Argentina. Yeah 27 nights Born from the producer of Santiago Miter (director of Argentina, 1985), The financing comes from Netflix. A loose end It is produced between Uruguay, Spain and Argentina, a combo that will be difficult to see again by the limitations of Milei.

At the inauguration ceremony, Miter, Hendler and the producer Agustina Campbell stressed that for a long time the industry had negotiated a “that cost to approve” cinema and that when they finally achieved it, accompanying it from its corresponding funds, Milei arrived and put the economist Carlos Pirovano, without prior connection with the cinema, in front of the INCAA. Pirovano made brutal criticism against Argentine cinema, then tempted his statements, and in August he became tangled up when he defended the film A silver man by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn, on a television program … until they asked him if he had seen her. His answer left the audience perplexed: “No, no, I said that I saw Tiktok. When you see a lot of Tiktok, you see almost the entire movie.”

The Argentines present in Donostia insist: “This year there has been no film with support from the Argentine government,” Campbell said. “Argentine films that are scheduled this year in San Sebastián were financed before the arrival of the Milei government or are original platform productions.” The filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler competes this Tuesday with The currents. The winner of the Locarno Festival in 2011 with Open doors and windows It presents a fascinating portrait of a woman who at the top of her professional and family success feels the need to break everything, although she knows that this impulse arises from a past that she thought she had left behind.

After talking about his movie, meticulous and restless, how Hitchcock has reviewed to remember that each plane matters, explains that The currents It is the last film that received financing from last law. “I, luckily, I am also a Switzerland, and there I looked for more money. “We launched ourselves to shoot, and did well, although there was even a depreciation of the weight that reduced our possibilities.”

Of course, the most popular cinema has received the support, dear or not, from Milei. The aforementioned Man’s silver He has devastated at the box office since its premiere in the middle of August in Buenos Aires. Two days before its launch, Milei projected it in the fifth presidential of Olivos, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, with deputies of his party. After the premiere, Milei once again scheduled some of the stories to his Council of Ministers. For Milei, the film illustrates the cultural battle against the left that heads since he came to power.