Teatro de guerra

The Falklands War lasted from April to June of 1982 and took the lives of 655 Argentinian and 255 British soldiers. It ended in Argentina’s military defeat and in territorial claims on both sides that remain contentious to this day. Thirty-five years after the end of the war, Argentinian artist and director Lola Arias invites veterans to look back – together, either in pairs or in dialogue with the camera. The British and the Argentinians face each other as former enemies, but also form an ensemble, such as when they re-enact a battle scene in an abandoned building that resembles a theatre. Maps, faded magazines, and footage of the surreal sites where combat took place provide visual points of departure and cinematic spaces for their stories of fear – fear of both dying and of killing – and of the repercussions of a war that left its mark on all of them. But Teatro de guerra doesn’t just confine itself to the past: in staged encounters with young actors the same age that Marcelo, Jim and the others were back then, the film also asks how memories are transmitted, and how they live on. (Berlinale)