Theatre of War

"Is it someone who was trying to surrender that I just killed?”

Argentine filmmaker Lola Arias, who also writes and directs, explores with this hybrid debut the fragmented memories of veteran soldiers, pitted against each other in an iniquitous conflict where fragmented memories and strata of a dislocated past are entangled.

Now in plain clothes, the obscure words and colours of former Argentine and British soldiers, once belligerents, at first lend the narrative an unusual solemn nudity to express the inextricable conflict of the Falklands. 

Then, by allowing personal accounts and theatrical re-enactments to intermingle freely, alongside the creative process and behind-the-scenes footage, the filmmaker deploys an impressive device to forge a link and jointly reconstruct a failing memory.

In contrast to the classic dramatic representation of the war narrative, Lola Arias creates an unstable, spirited collective testimony, conveyed by bodies and the trauma of a seminal scene that progresses from rewriting to rehearsal to a powerful final incarnation.

Lola Arias' troubling exercise in the liberation of speech is a unique and indispensable experience against oblivion and extinction.

Terence Chotard
Filmmaker