Ezequiel Salinas

In the summer of 1987 in a town in Córdoba, two teenage sisters, Elena and Lucia, are alone at home. The youngest is upset with her older sister, who thinks about how to get out of that town, to study and to live differently.

Fleeing homophobic attacks, Nino moves to a rural house amidst a forest haunted by Almamula, a monster that takes those who commit carnal sins. In a world of whispers, unspoken desires and prayers, Nino’s curiosity and impulses rise to the surface.

The hypocrites tells the story of Nicolás, a young cameraman who works filming social events, but doesn’t feel fulfilled with his profession. In the middle of a high profile wedding, he accidentally records a compromising situation between the bride, Martina, and her brother, Esteban. Realising about what is in the tape, he sees the opportunity of leaving his tedious life behind through blackmailing the people involved. However, he does not know this secret could endanger his own life.

Nina and Fermín spend the night in the neighborhood where their father is a security guard. Between lights and shadows, they walk, play, eat. Nina observes others in silence, as though she were looking at herself in a mirror that is about to break. The night moves stealthily on, while other children watch them from their windows.

On 3 November 1995, the Rio Tercero Military Factory exploded in Cordoba, prompting thousands of projectiles to fire and spread in the surrounding villages, in a tragedy that would leave seven dead and hundreds injured and affected. At the time, Natalia Garayalde was a twelve-year-old girl who lived with her family near the place, and he was still playing filming with the video camera her father had bought, when she recorded the immediate moments of the burst, while her family escaped the explosions, as well as the daily activities of the village in the days and weeks that follow. Twenty-five years later, that material captured from a girl's candid and surprised gaze it becomes a thoughtful and painful testimony about the family, the destruction of a city, the traces of horror, the sinister truth about the case.

Year 1866. Venancio, a young gaucho, embarks on a journey to escape from a curse through a war-torn region desperately seeking salvation among rustlers, priests, shamans and deserters. The stronger his fear is, the more real the legend becomes.

Pelu is a thirty-something who barely survives on his salary as a projectionist at a municipal film club. After losing his job, he agrees to stay on as a night watchman and ends up living secretly inside the cinema, accompanied by the films he reviews every night.

The life of Juan José Gorasurreta is pierced by images. In his new feature film, the historic film society programmer appropriates the films that made him in order to find new relationships and patterns and thus generate a convergence between his personal life, that of Argentina and that of cinema. In The Absences his travels coexist with Orson Welles, activism, Fernando Birrri, the Cordobazo, his studies, Eva Landeck, family, Carlos Echeverría, the Trelew Massacre, Nagisa Ōshima, censorship, film societies, the Malvinas war, his short films. The randomness of this list vanishes as the film progresses, and gives way to a synapse that is as logical as it is moving. “It is a portrait on how Argentine history and my encounter with films designed my sensitive areas” —as he did with his own story, no one could define The Absences better than Gorasurreta himself.