Small Screen Surrender
Streaming recommendations for October and Ricardo Darin gets his own series. Plus, our big announcement.
With the clocks about to turn back in less than 2 weeks, you might be contemplating how to get through the dark months ahead. Luckily, the colder months usually yield the most interesting releases, many of which previewed at the recent London Film Festival. We’ll be unpacking our highlights from this year’s festival in our next issue, including the films coming to UK screens this year.
For now, grab a pumpkin spiced latte and prepare your hibernation stations with our top streaming picks. Plus we have big news.
OCTOBER STREAMING RECOMMENDATIONS
Copa 71 (Dirs. Rachel Ramsey, James Erskine, United Kingdom, 2023)
Whether discouraged on ‘health grounds’, or simply because their participation was seen as unfeminine, the stories of female athletes and their sporting achievements have historically been relegated to the shadows. Some recent documentaries on sport in Latin America however, have gone some way to righting that wrong.
Amongst these, Copa 71 has been generating buzz since it first screened at London Film Festival last year. Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine’s film tells the hidden story of the first-ever Women’s World Cup that took place in Mexico in 1971. Six nations – including Argentina and England – played the biggest stadiums in Mexico City and Guadalajara respectively, with the final alone drawing in 110, 000 spectators. But the event vanished from historical records, until now.
Executive produced by Serena and Venus Williams, and built from archive material unseen for 50 years, Copa 71 examines the social stigma that was attached to women playing football which led to the event being buried for so long.
Available to stream for free on the BBC iPlayer
Official Competition (Dirs. Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, Argentina-Spain, 2021)
Argentina’s most outlandish film-making duo, Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat (The Man Next Door, The Distinguished Citizen) love nothing more than sending up creative types and their huge egos. For Official Competition, their latest offering, the pair take aim at the filmmaking business itself. But fear not, this riotous comedy is not just for industry insiders.
Official Competition stars Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez as the trio of ‘talent’ brought together by an aging CEO to make a ‘great’ film in order to rebrand himself and preserve his immortality. Penélope Cruz’s plays eccentric director, Lola Cuevas, and is in charge of casting the film. She decides to pit two very different actors against each other with the aim of obtaining ‘authentic’ performances. Antonio Banderas plays international star, Félix Rivero, who has millions of followers on his Insta, while theatre thesp Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez) is all studied craft and pompous authenticity. One has money and status; the other has acting students hanging off his every word. Each secretly envies the other.
Stream Official Competition free on Channel 4.
El Pepe, A Supreme Life (El Pepe, una vida suprema, Dir. Emir Kusturica, Argentina, Uruguay, Serbia, 2018)
Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica’s (Maradona by Kusturica, Underground) 2018 documentary, El Pepe, A Supreme Life, is an intimate look at José ´Pepe´Mujica, the former President of Uruguay adored by his people. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018, coincidentally screening alongside Alvaro Brechner’s A Twelve-Year Night (also streaming on Netflix) a fictional rendering of Mujica’s involvement with the Tupamaros and his decade-long incarceration, a subject Kusturica’s documentary touches on only briefly.
“If it’s the majority of people who elect you for office, one has to try to live like the majority, not the minority.” El Pepe tells Kusturica, one of his many philosophies. The film follows Mujica in 2015 from his last days in office to his retirement on his farm, where he lives with his wife, fellow political activist Lucia Topolansky, and their dog. It sees him meet with Barack Obama, Pope Francis and George Soros as well as ordinary Uruguayans who he actively supports with his day-to-day activities.
Now 89 years old, and currently battling cancer, the film sheds light on an unusual and extraordinary man and features a soundtrack of candombe rhythms and tango.
El Pepe, A Supreme Life is available to stream on Netflix
Coming to Netflix in 2025: The Eternaut starring Ricardo Darin
Produced by Netflix and K&S Films (the team behind the Argentine hit comedy Wild Tales) this new Argentine sci-fi series follows the survivors of a toxic snowfall in Buenos Aires who must resist an invisible threat from another world. It starts Argentine actor Ricardo Darin as Juan Salvo, an ordinary family man determined to protect his wife and daughter from the unknown danger.
The series is an adaptation of the iconic comic book El eternauta, a story about an alien invasion in Buenos Aires that became a cultural classic. Written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López, and originally published as a weekly comic strip in the magazine “Hora Cero” in 1957, El eternauta ((a word coined in Spanish that describes an eternal traveller) is one of the most popular comic books in the history of Argentine graphic novels.
The adaptation will be directed by Bruno Stagnaro —known for his iconic and influential Pizza, Beer and Cigarettes (Pizza, Birra, Faso, 1998). Previously a film version of El eternauta was also considered by a number of renowned Argentine directors including Adolfo Aristarain and Fernando “Pino” Solanas and Lucrecia Martel.
BIG NEWS!
We have an announcement. After a year on Substack, we’ve now reached a whopping 5,000 subscribers!
Whether you’re a long-standing AFF supporter, film fanatic or Latin American enthusiast, or you recently stumbled across us through the Substack labyrinth, we’d like to thank you for joining us on this journey.
Our mission was always to highlight the best of Argentine cinema, and Latin American culture generally. With your support, we’d like to develop this platform -and community - further.
From November we will be increasing our output to two newsletters a month.
As you know, our monthly newsletter has always been free, and we want it to stay accessible to everyone. So we’ll keep it free and film-focussed. In addition, we’ll publish a second members-only newsletter each month, where we’ll be covering not just film, but other Latin American arts events, as well as food, travel, interviews and more.
It goes without saying that this takes more time and resources. So we invite you to support us by signing up to this new member-only content.
We have the following membership options:
Monthly: £5 per month
Includes free and member-only newsletters and full access to the archive.
Annual: £50 for the year (two months free)
Includes free and member-only newsletters and full access to the archive.
Founder: £125
Founder members get access to the free and member-only newsletters, our archive, and priority to previews and ticket giveaways where available. They will also receive a gorgeous limited Argentine Film Festival mug (UK subscribers only).
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Thank you for reading!
Saludos,
The Argentine Film Festival Team