Alemania (2023) dir. María Zanetti
Before plunging into the debut film by the Argentine María Zanetti, it is worth remembering that the Latin America Cinemateca of Los Angeles is always interested in showcasing new and noteworthy filmmakers, coming from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. The Nueva Onda an Nepantla sections of LACLA, specifically, feature works of emerging and experimental directors, worth gaining critical attention beyond their countries. They may have been seen in festivals or had some arthouse distribution, as I have pointed out in previous program notes, but a screening in Los Angeles in the context of a curated series sees them as part of the larger body of Latin American cinema.
As I have also written before, it may not be an easy task for programmer Guido Segal to find pearls for these Cinemateca screenings over the years. A few examples: Mexican filmmaker Andrés Kaiser’s opera prima Feral (2018) was a self-assured exploration of psychological horror and the documentary style; Como el cielo después de llover (2020), also a debut film by Colombian director Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo, was a remarkable first-person autobiographical documentary about the art and craft of filmmaking; and Malpaso, a Dominican Republic film by Héctor Valdez, combines the horror genre with magical realism and astute political commentary.
Alemania is certainly in this eclectic league. The story is minimal and centered on a middle-class family in a suburb north of Buenos Aires: Lola is a teenager whose family is upended by the mental disorder of the oldest sister, disrupting her plans of a semester in Germany. As a result, the home is in psychological and financial turmoil, during the few weeks the story unfolds, in the 1990s.
At the heart of the film - told strictly from the point of view of Lola, played with understated sensitivity by Maite Aguilar – there is a strange tension generated by a plot that eschews character psychology and deflates the drama built in key scenes removing the climax. Alemania is then a series of ordinary moments in the life of a 16-year old girl, that requires the viewer to “construct” and identify with the story, without a single concession to nostalgia, and minimal historical markers. For a young audience, it is a strange environment, without cell phones and computers (would they know what a Walkman is?), creating anxiety and low self-esteem. In the film, physical spaces like the home, school, sports and music clubs, the streets, push Lola to pay attention to what goes on around her, and trigger a coming-of-age process. For audiences who remember the 1990s, Alemania creates a different kind of space for thinking about the complicated business of growing up, handling parents, siblings, friends and first loves. An Argentine viewer will appreciate the recreation of the decade, coded in the opening scene with Maria Luisa Bemberg’s modern classic Camila (1994) – the forbidden love of young woman and a priest ending in tragedy – and the music of Charly Garcia.
In an interview with , María Zanetti noted that she wrote the autobiographical script during the pandemic, as a way to cope with a similar family dynamic growing up in the nineties. The film was a coproduction with Spain, set up when the project earned an award in . It premiered in the Horizonte Latino of the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2023 and opened theatrically in Argentina last year.
Perhaps a work of mourning for the director – as we can surmise in the film’s dedication to her brother, now deceased – Alemania is a present-day example of cine de autor, alive and well, independently made yet supported by state funding. It avoids genre conventions, a three-act structure and the heightened drama expected of coming-of-age stories. Not a picture for a wide audience. There is a place, however, for intimate works like these, that capture, as Alemania does, viscerally, in its camera work, lighting and editing, a slice of life we all can understand. There is tenderness and humanity in the portrait of the seemingly distracted parents, overwhelmed by the mental disorder of their oldest daughter, played realistically
by María Ucedo y Walter Jakob; and a quiet universality in the portrait of an adolescent searching for herself.
Miranda de la Serna,
“Alemania: Familia y enfermedad mental, desde la mirada de una adolescente”. La Capital (Mar del Plata), November 5, 2023.
Source: https://www.lacapitalmdp.com/alemania-familia-y-enfermedad-mental-desde-la-mirada-de-una-adolescente/, accessed January 17, 2025.
“Se estrena Alemania, de María Zanetti: una película sobre la salud mental en primera persona”. Urgente 24, March 22, 2024.
Free Screening
The special screening of “Alemania” will take place on Friday, March 28, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 pm at the Mexican Consulate Theater, 2401 W 6th St, Los Angeles, CA 90057. Free RSVP https://alemania.eventbrite.com/