Shooting has kicked off on Ritorno a Buenos Aires, the new film by Marco Bechis who previously directed Barbed Wire (in competition in Locarno and Sundance in 1991), Garage Olimpo (presented in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in 1999 and the winner of a David di Donatello awards and three Italian Golden Globes), Children (presented in the 2001 Venice Film Festival’s Cinema del Presente section) and Birdwatchers [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film] (selected in competition in Venice 2008).

Leading the cast of this movie penned by the director himself is Adriano Giannini (nominated for the 2024 Best Supporting Actor David di Donatello award via Adagio [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film], recently seen in A Brief Affair and the Netflix series Public Disorder [+lire aussi :
critique
fiche série]), who’s joined by a first class Argentinian cast comprising Ana Celentano, Vero Gerez, Olivia Nuss, Adrián Fondari and Marcelo Chaparro (the latter two having previously worked with Bechis on Garage Olimpo and Children), together with Brazilian actress Paula Cohen.

Shot between Porto Alegre in Brazil, and Turin, with support from the Film Commission Torino Piemonte, the film follows Mariano Guerra, who’s called upon to return to Argentina to testify against the soldiers who kidnapped and tortured him during the military dictatorship, the same military dictatorship which organised the World Cup in 1978 while the country was secretly being repressed. In a press release, the production team stressed that “the film isn’t about the return of a hero looking for revenge, but the journey of a man burdened by his own dark past when, broken by torture, he denounced his comrades. As was the case in Garage Olimpo, any violence takes place off-camera; what’s interesting here is the inner workings of violence, and the way it settles inside of survivors’ bodies and in their perceptions”.

Production on the movie will wrap in the first trimester of 2026, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Argentinian military dictatorship (March 1976), which presents an opportunity to draw attention to what actually remains after survival. Photography on Ritorno a Buenos Aires comes courtesy of Fabrizio La Palombara while editing falls to Jacopo Quadri.

The movie is an international co-production between Italy and Brazil: in Italy, Domenico Procacci and Laura Paolucci are co-producing on behalf of Fandango, Alfredo Federico and Simona Banchi on behalf of 39Films, and Marco Bechis for Karta Film in league with RAI Cinema, while Patrick de Jongh, Cibele Amaral and André Ristum are producing on behalf of 34 Filmes in Brazil.