Shakti

Federico, is in his mid-twenties and lives alone in Buenos Aires. The day his grandmother dies, he decides to part with his girlfriend Magda. He fears hurting her. But when the time comes, she beats him to it. She is laid-back, feisty and not even close to feeling hurt. He is however, especially when he learns that she already has someone new. But then he finds the potato knishes in the freezer that his recently departed grandmother gave him and everything changes. Rejtman’s stage is the microcosm of the Argentine society, which he deciphers in carefully composed images with a sparsely told story and a directing approach in defiance of retro realism. Rejtman belongs to the new wave of Argentine film that first gained recognition in Europe in the mid-1990s. According to Dr. Rocío Gordon of the University of Virginia, the key aspect of his work is that the director and author does not tell linear stories in a run-of-the-mill way, but rather refers to an aesthetic of apathy. Within this apathy, comedy gains the greatest of scopes – a unique position in Argentina until now. (Berlinale)