White Elephant

Two priests work in a shanty district on the edge of Buenos Aires: Julián, who has been there for years, and Nicolás, a Belgian who arrived after surviving a massacre in the Amazon. An enormous unfinished hospital stands in the middle of the neighbourhood. As they push for a housing project, drug gangs, the police and the church each get in their way. The film is not interested in faith. It is interested in the withdrawal of institutions: the state is absent, the church keeps its distance, the gangs are established, and the two men are left in that gap. Julián's illness works as a clock saying the time for this work has run out. The form is dense: long takes shot in a real neighbourhood, crowded streets and a celebrated unbroken pursuit sequence. The camera almost never stops. Pablo Trapero directed. The film screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2012. Behind the characters stands the story of Carlos Mugica, the priest killed in 1974 while working in poor districts of Argentina, and the film refers to him openly. Ricardo Darín plays Julián, Jérémie Renier Nicolás and Martina Gusmán the social worker. Who it is for: viewers who like Argentine cinema and films that go straight at a social question. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope. The film offers no solution, its violence is sudden and its ending is heavy.