Back to Buenos Aires premieres in Venice Competition
A former prisoner of Argentina's 1976 military coup has taken his own history into Competition at the Venice Film Festival.
Back to Buenos Aires, titled Ritorno a Buenos Aires in Italian, is directed by Marco Bechis and premiered in Competition, the main line-up competing for the festival's top prizes, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It was presented as part of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, organised by La Biennale, according to La Biennale.
The story follows Mariano Guerra, an Italian doctor, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. His life is still shaped by Argentina's dictatorship 30 years later. That regime was a military junta that tortured and killed thousands during its rule, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
He survived. Bechis was himself kidnapped and imprisoned in Argentina after the 1976 coup, and is described as a surviving desaparecido, the term used for people seized by the regime who were never seen again, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film draws on that personal history.
Bechis wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Vijaya Bechis Boll, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The cast includes Adriano Giannini, Ana Celentano, Verónica Gerez, Olivia Nuss and Adrian Fondari.
The film runs 1 hour 45 minutes, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Dialogue is in Italian and Spanish, with Italian and English subtitles, according to the festival programme.
After Venice, the next stop is Switzerland. The film was set to receive its international premiere at the Zurich Film Festival, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
What makes this stand out is the direct link between film-maker and subject. For audiences unfamiliar with the period, the credits explain the connection in plain terms: a director who lived through detention telling a story about memory decades later.
