07/09/2026 - VENICE 2026: María Aparicio explores work, migration and historical memory through a gentle encounter in Madrid which turns melancholy into potential rebellion

Small gestures, chance encounters and seemingly marginal conversations become a launch pad for examining work, migration and historical memory in Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion. Presented in the 23rd Giornate degli Autori line-up in Venice, the fourth feature film by 34-year-old Argentine director María Aparicio is an Argentine-Spanish co-production which falls in line with the filmmaker’s usual intimate and observational approach, where the everyday becomes a space for teasing out political and social issues.

Eva (Eva Bianco, who toplined the director’s previous film, Las cosas indefinidas) is an Argentine filmmaker passing through Madrid. She’s arrived after taking part in a film festival in France and spends her days alone, with little interest in forging new relationships. At the Museo Reina Sofía she meets Dante (Roger Koza), an Argentine historian living in the Spanish capital temporarily while researching Juan Bialet Massé and working conditions in Argentina at the beginning of the twentieth century. A gentle friendship blossoms between them, defying conventionally romantic plotlines. They meet at the museum, swap books, and discuss films, history, labour and politics. Both are foreigners in a city which doesn’t belong to them; both seem to be living in a state of transience. The pair develop a natural rapport, buoyed by minimalist performances which primarily leave room for words, silences and small gestures.

Aparicio ensures the museum is a key presence in the film: the venue’s architecture, light, rooms and transitional spaces help to set the pace of the story, while Madrid is revealed as anything but picture-postcard. Dante’s routine – the library at opening time, the supermarket run, the coin-operated launderette – also helps create a suspended, melancholy atmosphere in which time seems to stretch. It’s precisely through meeting Eva that Dante’s research changes course. The film gradually shifts from the historical study of Bialet Massé to the present and the conditions of migrant workers in modern-day Spain. At this point, Aparicio introduces documentary elements, with conversations with waiters, carers, cleaners and other immigrant workers tipping the film further from fiction towards reality. 

The transition is fluid, and this allows dialogue between two temporalities: the workers’ struggles in early-twentieth-century Argentina and the present-day reality still marked by precariousness, low wages and scant protection. The nod to Javier Milei’s Argentina (“we have failed”) also situates the protagonists’ private story within a broader political context without turning the film into a manifesto. The title, in fact, suggests twofold tension, juxtaposing the sadness of the present condition with the possibility of rebellion. The Marx quote – a call not only to interpret the world, but to change it – becomes key in a film which sees thought as a possible prelude to action.

In this sense, Aparicio has crafted a work which is muted in tone yet precise in its intentions. The film’s melancholic score and oneiric touches complement a narrative which unfolds through digressions and unexpected connections, until the circle between historical research and contemporary testimony is closed. It’s a film focused on encounters, listening and paying attention to detail, where the political isn’t imposed on the story but instead arises naturally from observing people and the work which still defines the options they’ll have in their lives.

Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion was produced by Argentine outfits La buena hora and Las Flores together with Spain’s Mordisco Films, Pyewacket Films, Cosabona Films, Brava, Pifostio Films, Pasajes Invisibles and Zampano Producciones. International sales are handled by Spanish firm Paper Moon.

(Translated from Italian)