Foreigner

A wave of anonymous attacks will capriciously unite the stories, leading them towards an inexorable end.

A young man, on his way to a factory to assess its efficiency, causes a car crash. The factory owner, who ran the business with his wife and her brother, has been killed in an accident, though whether it’s the same accident is left unclear. The film explores the unforeseeable ramifications of the twin tragedies.

It chronicles a few hours in the life of a family living on the southern coast of Buenos Aires. After breakfast, a father (Guillermo Arengo) heads off with his son (Agustín Alcoba) to a desolate beach for the day, while his wife (Roxana Berco) visits her seriously ill mother (Susana Campos) in a remote, wooded area.

Brisa’s daily life alternates between the world of show business, appearances, and the stark reality presented by his son Hilario, who fell into poverty as a result of his addiction to drugs. The film portrays an intense fragment of Susana and Hilario’s story, the difficulties that arise when she tries to keep her professional commitments, the elegance with which she manages to avoid the low blows and her pain; but, fundamentally, the film reveals how this woman faces a difficult process without losing her dignity or sense of humor.

Are words, photographs and speeches sufficient means for describing and communicating a complex, harsh, unmanageable reality? These unsolved questions pursue Cassandra during her trip through the impenetrable Chaco as chronicler of a means of communication, her first job after graduating from literature school. The unknown reality of native peoples who live in the Chaco communities, their beautiful and uncomprehensive languages and their dilemmas facing an economy which excludes them, are part of a trip in which Cassandra finds an inhabitable world within her status as foreigner. Her visions start merging with the cosmovision of ancient inhabitants until she becomes part of the enigma herself.

Director Miguel Kohan tries to connect the memories of his Gaucho-Jewish family with the fleeing of the Sephardim from the Iberian Península in 1492. Surinam, New York, Jamaica, and Brazil are some of the places where the untold story of those who escaped inquisition is visibilized.

Abril tries to find meaning in her own life. In the process, her perception changes; her skin transforms to the point of becoming a new one.