If I Should Die Before I Wake

Carlos Hugo Christensen's 1952 Argentine film tells of child abductions in a neighbourhood from a child's point of view. After a classmate disappears, Lucio realises an adult is behind it, but nobody believes him. The film's strength is that it never leaves that perspective. The adults treat what the boy says as imagination, and as the danger grows nobody intervenes. It draws an uncomfortable picture of how children's warnings are ignored. The cinematography stays close to the language of noir: narrow streets, shadow and night. The film is adapted from a story by Cornell Woolrich and counts among the best examples of the genre in Argentine cinema. Nestor Zavarce plays the boy. Who it's for: those who like classic Latin American thrillers and narratives told from a child's view. Who it's not for: viewers who do not want to approach threats to children; the film places that at its centre.