Next year there may be “no” Argentine films at the San Sebastián Film Festival, leading stars from the domestic industry warned on Tuesday from Spain.
Filmmaker Diego Lerman and actor Leonardo Sbaraglia used an appearance at the prestigious festival in northern Spain to criticise cutbacks to the Argentine cinema business by President Javier Milei.
“It’s a time of total uncertainty. There’s a very big paralysis, we don’t know how many films there will be next year. Few, that’s for sure. Or none at all, I don’t know,” said Lerman at a press conference promoting his latest film, El hombre que amaba los platos voladores (“The man who loved flying saucers”).
“Those of us who come from a generation who grew up with the [National] Film Law, to suddenly see this systematic, violent attack is, I don’t know… we try to defend ourselves, to show our films, to be united, but the truth is we’re facing absolute uncertainty,” admitted Lerman, who described the situation as “very sad.”
Milei has embarked on a strict austerity campaign since taking office last December, drastically reducing government spending to tackle a fierce economic crisis and runaway inflation.
Among the cutbacks have been steep adjustments for the budget of the INCAA national film institute. Funding and support programmes have been suspended, more than a quarter of the institution’s staff have been laid off and all approval for new projects was blocked for 90 days – all measures that have been strongly criticised by professionals from the sector.
“We have an objectively wonderful cinema, with a great worldwide identity, and it’s also an industry that works financially and feeds so many families, it’s not an industry that doesn’t work,” complained Sbaraglia.
“The last thing we want is to be talking politics at a press conference while presenting such a wonderful film, but a conflict has been generated ... which we didn’t start. Others started it," stated Sbaraglia, who plays the lead in Lerman’s new film.
As a gesture of support for Argentine cinema, the San Sebastián Film Festival is premiering new documentary Traslados, which investigates and reconstructs the “death flights" carried out by Argentina’s brutal 1976-19 83 military dictatorship.
The title of the film refers to prisoners – activists and others viewed as enemies of the military junta – who were rounded up on the pretext of being "transferred," drugged, then loaded into planes and thrown out over the Río de la Plata, some already dead but many still alive.
Several officials in the Milei administration have been criticised for their “denialist” position on the dictatorship era and for questioning the number of victims estimated by human rights group.
Protests over government cutbacks were also present at the last Cannes Festival in May, when Argentine filmmakers present reported “a crusade against culture, science and education” by Milei’s government.
– TIMES/AFP
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