<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>In the Argentine film <italic>The Headless Woman</italic> (<italic>La mujer sin cabeza</italic>, Lucrecia Martel, 2008), the protagonist Vero is haunted by the possibility of killing someone in a hit-and-run. Although hinting at the crimes committed during the last dictatorship in Argentina, <italic>The Headless Woman</italic> refers more to a mechanism of the past that is transformed and updated within contemporary society. In this essay, Martel’s film acts a starting point in the exploration of recent Argentine films that deal with spectres from the past that pervade everyday life in the present: <italic>Clementina</italic> (Jimena Monteoliva, 2017), <italic>One Sister</italic> (<italic>Una hermana</italic>, Sofía Brockenshire and Verena Kuri, 2017) and <italic>The Returned</italic> (<italic>Los que vuelven</italic>, Laura Casabé, 2019). In a decade in which we can notice a remarkable growth of the horror genre in Argentine cinema, these films embrace several codes and characters from the horror genre to approach the Argentine reality. The author discusses how these filmmakers adopt similar aesthetic features from the horror genre to invoke and address the violence that permeates Argentine society today, with special attention devoted to ghosts, a key figure to understand an ongoing history of brutalities that usually go unresolved.</p>
</abstract>

In the Argentine film The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza, Lucrecia Martel, 2008), the protagonist Vero is haunted by the possibility of killing someone in a hit-and-run. Although hinting at the crimes committed during the last dictatorship in Argentina, The Headless Woman refers more to a mechanism of the past that is transformed and updated within contemporary society. In this essay, Martel’s film acts a starting point in the exploration of recent Argentine films that deal with spectres from the past that pervade everyday life in the present: Clementina (Jimena Monteoliva, 2017), One Sister (Una hermana, Sofía Brockenshire and Verena Kuri, 2017) and The Returned (Los que vuelven, Laura Casabé, 2019). In a decade in which we can notice a remarkable growth of the horror genre in Argentine cinema, these films embrace several codes and characters from the horror genre to approach the Argentine reality. The author discusses how these filmmakers adopt similar aesthetic features from the horror genre to invoke and address the violence that permeates Argentine society today, with special attention devoted to ghosts, a key figure to understand an ongoing history of brutalities that usually go unresolved.

They Live: Violence, Horror and Spectres in Four Contemporary Argentine Films

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

{"article-title":"They Live: Violence, Horror and Spectres in Four Contemporary Argentine Films"}

In the Argentine film The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza, Lucrecia Martel, 2008), the protagonist Vero is haunted by the possibility of killing someone in...

They Live: Violence, Horror and Spectres in Four Contemporary Argentine Films

Published Online: Nov 10, 2022

Page range: 77 - 96

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2022-0013

Keywords
Argentine contemporary film, horror film, ghosts and memory, violence, haunting and spectrality

© 2022 Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

They Live: Violence, Horror and Spectres in Four Contemporary Argentine Films

Published Online: Nov 10, 2022

Page range: 77 - 96

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2022-0013

KeywordsArgentine contemporary film, horror film, ghosts and memory, violence, haunting and spectrality

© 2022 Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
Argentine contemporary film, horror film, ghosts and memory, violence, haunting and spectrality