La Flor

Mariano Llinás's film runs eight hundred and eight minutes excluding intermissions and is the longest film in Argentine cinema. It consists of six independent episodes, connected only by the fact that four actresses live entirely different lives in entirely different universes in each. In turn the film becomes a B-movie, a musical, a spy thriller, an uncategorisable metafiction, a remake of a very well-known French classic and an enigmatic period piece. It is a joint project between the production group El Pampero Cine and the theatre company Piel de Lava; Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa and Laura Paredes worked on it for about ten years. Llinás appears on screen between episodes to explain the structure himself. Some episodes are left unfinished, deliberately; the film's real subject is narrative itself. Who it's for: viewers interested in experimental narrative, Argentine independent cinema and long-form filmmaking. Who it's not for: anyone unable to take more than thirteen hours, or who expects the stories to be completed.