María Villar, Cleo Moguillansky y Alejo Moguillansky tratan de leer en vivo –tal vez cantar– una voz en off sincrónica a la proyección de una escena eliminada de la película La vendedora de fósforos, entre la ficción, el ensayo, la exhumación, el fracaso, y el tiempo que pasa y no perdona.

A hapless sound recordist falls for a dancer in Alejo Moguillansky playful, deadpan fusion of romantic comedy with dance on film.

Four characters are looking for a man called Castro, but we don't know why. For some mysterious reason, Castro is running. He has left his life behind, and survives by hiding in a room in a small city. He is basically alone, but someone has appeared in his life, Celia. She is young, beautiful, and sometimes cruel.

Films about confinement during the pandemic may have gone viral, but La edad media is a species of a whole other kind. Lucid and ludic, terribly funny but also deeply serious at the same time, this film co-directed by dancer and choreographer Luciana Acuña and filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky has a wise, privileged narrator: their ten-year-old daughter Cleo. Through her eyes, the film deals with far more issues than mere Covid routines, such as online lessons and virtual shopping, the latter of which turns awfully weird here. Rampant inflation, cultural policy and market value are on the menu of La edad media, which expands upon the question raised by Moguillansky in his previous film Por el dinero (2019): is it possible for artists to pay the bills with their work? And if so, at what cost? The cinematic use of the restricted space of the family home is masterful in all its possibilities, which Acuña and Moguillansky embrace with a crazy, slapstick spirit augmented with Samuel Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd. And a special mention goes to Juana, the family dog: Aki Kaurismäki would surely love to cast her in his next film.

Moguillansky’s follow-up to The Gold Beetle is a fantasia that elegantly weaves together disparate elements: Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the little match girl, Bresson’s saintly abused donkey Balthazar, a Red Army Faction member’s correspondence with an Argentine pianist, and a composer trying to mount an opera at the Teatro Colón. Winner of Best Argentine Film at last year’s BAFICI, The Little Match Girl is infused with emotion, and never devolves into the obscure or didactic, despite its many literary and cinematic references. Featuring exquisite cinematography from Inés Duacastella, this spectacular work must not be missed.