Azor

December 1980. Yvan De Wiel is a private banker from Geneva. He comes to Buenos Aires; his partner has disappeared and the clients must be kept. He arrives with his wife Inés. The meetings begin: a breeder of horses, a lawyer, a churchman, a general. Everyone is courteous. Nobody mentions the man who has vanished. There is military control in the streets and people are disappearing; but that is not discussed. The further Yvan goes the more he learns what his partner was doing, and what is being offered to him. Andreas Fontana directs; he wrote the screenplay with Mariano Llinás and it is his first feature. Fabrizio Rongione plays Yvan and Stéphanie Cléau plays Inés. It is a Swiss, French and Argentine co-production. The film screened in the Encounters section at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival. The director was nominated in the international feature category at the Gotham awards. The matter it treats is complicity carried on through courtesy; nobody says anything openly and every sentence has a second meaning. The film shows no violence; the dictatorship exists only between the lines and in empty chairs. The title comes from a word of warning bankers used among themselves, meaning that care is needed. The narrative builds no suspense and keeps its plot deliberately flat. The photography is cold; the interiors are wide and empty. Its limit is the watching; the narrative is very slow, there is little event, and the viewer is expected to infer. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet political drama and indirect narrative. Who it is not for: it is slow, cold, and the ending closed.