Matadero

Social fractures are ever-present in Argentine art since its first expressions. Works like Esteban Echeverría’s The Slaughter Yard —written between 1838 and 1840— helped build a class representation that still prevails in collective imagination. Santiago Fillol feeds from this foundational short story and gives shape to this pampas thriller that tells the story of Jared, a foreign filmmaker who arrives in La Pampa to shoot the adaptation of Echeverría’s tale in 1974, the moment in which the persecution against left-wing movements started to grow stronger. Told from the point of view of the assistant director, the film alternates between the difficulties of the shoot, the echoes from three historical times (1840, the ‘70s and present day), the increasing activism of a group of actors and, as Fillol himself states, the indomitable nature of cinema.