The Tangalanga Method

Mateo Bendesky's 2023 Argentine comedy takes its name from a legendary local prank caller: Doctor Tangalanga was a real man known for decades of recorded calls to strangers. The film is not his biography; it follows Jorge Rizzi, a shy corporate employee who releases a reckless alter ego after a hypnosis session, and uses the Tangalanga myth inside that fiction. Martín Piroyansky playing two personalities in one body carries the comedy. Bendesky rebuilds the Buenos Aires of the 1960s and 70s through colour and set design, and that nostalgic surface sometimes gets ahead of the content. Most of the prank calls rest on Argentine slang, and a layer of them is lost in translation. Who it's for: viewers curious about Argentine comedy, alter ego stories and local popular-culture myths. Who it's not for: anyone who does not know who Tangalanga was and will feel the gap, or who will mind losing part of the jokes in translation.