Argentina experiencing ‘an extreme situation’ under Milei, says filmmaker Lola Arias

The drastic austerity campaign introduced by President Javier Milei, which has harshly hit the cultural sector, has led Argentina into “an extreme situation,” says theatre and film director Lola Arias.

Arias, 47, made the remarks during an interview on the sidelines of the San Sebastián film festival, where she is presented Reas, her latest feature.

“It’s an extreme situation as we have never experienced [before] ... but not only for film, it’s for the survival of a bunch of people in Argentina who are pushed by this government to live below the poverty line,” observed the writer, artist and director.

“It’s been very brutal because Milei’s government ... has been destroying everything, destroying all public policies in relation to state universities, defunding state hospitals and culture,” she continued.

Milei was inaugurated in December in the midst of a deep economic crisis and runaway inflation. Since taking office, he has slashed government expenditure, not least on funding cultural projects.

For the national film industry, the hit has been hard. The INCAA national film institute has borne the brunt, with cutbacks which have translated into the suspension of aid programmes and the dismissal of employees. 

Today, INCAA is all but paralysed.

The state of play has been fiercely criticised by members of the film industry, both in the country and abroad, notably at the Cannes Festival back in May and the San Sebastián Festival this week.

Arias took part in an act of solidarity to support Argentine cinema on Tuesday at the Kursaal, the festival’s main venue. Several Argentine stars and directors warned that national productions would be dramatically affected. 

It is “a truly unprecedented situation, to destroy everything which can bring an image of the country, a future for a lot of artists and also an industry, because Argentine film really does give jobs to a lot of people,” underlined Arias in her interview.

Also a playwright, Arias presented her second feature film, Reas (“Inmates”). The feature is competing for the best Latin American film in the ‘Horizontes’ section.

The project was conceived in a film and drama course she taught at a women’s prison in Ezeiza in 2019, where she met Yoseli Arias (no relation), an inmate who would later end up starring in the film.

Initial plans, however, were put on hold when the Covid-19 pandemic arrived. It Became impossible to visit the prison, and thus Arias started “giving workshops to people who had already left prison, and throughout those years the group was put together” of 14 women who completed the film’s cast.

The film, which probes life at a women’s prison, is a peculiar mix of drama and musical, wth elements of both fiction and documentary. The stories told by the former inmates, using their real names, are true.

The idea of including musical sections came from the fact that two of the people, “Estefy and Nacho, who is a trans man, had a rock band in prison called Sin Control and put on concerts,” explained Arias.

“I started seeing through them and their band that music is a tool for resistance within prison and music somehow is what generates cohesion,” she pointed out.

Unlike traditional musicals portraying “marginal worlds in a romantic way,” here the former inmates “tell and reconstruct their story, dance and sing, perhaps not as perfectly as a professional dancer, but with plenty of glamour and beauty,” the director explained.

To be in the film, the women, who often could not get a job and had no social security or health coverage, were hired, which meant a “very big life change” for them, Arias specified.

Now, the women are also taking part in a touring play by Arias, Los días afuera (“The days out”),” about their life being free, which is currently crossing Europe.

For the director, this week’s showing of her film was a special moment. The women who star in the film came to San Sebastián to help present the film, a work which “impacted their lives and gave them hope, a vision for the future.”