Berlinale Encounters: Argentina, in the heart of darkness. About Andreas Fontana’s film AZOR.

The Swiss pri­vate banker René Keys dis­ap­peared with­out a trace in the tur­moil of the Argen­tine mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship. Togeth­er with his wife Inés, his part­ner Yvan De Weil trav­els to Buenos Aires to find out what hap­pened. Keys was respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing con­tact with wealthy Argen­tine cus­tomers for the bank. In search of Keys, Inés and Yvan encounter immea­sur­ably wealthy, but also ter­ri­bly deca­dent and dubi­ous nou­veau riche, heirs to mil­lions, nobles, the mil­i­tary, busi­ness­men and cler­gy­men who, it turns out, make com­mon cause with the mil­i­tary régime if it works out finan­cial­ly for them. They invade a world of lux­u­ry hotels, pri­vate clubs, horse races and exclu­sive recep­tions, and watch the mil­i­tary arrest peo­ple on the streets again and again.

Inés and Yvan try to get their Argen­tine assets back to Switzer­land. The con­nec­tion between the bank­ing world and the diplo­mat­ic corps and the Argen­tine jun­ta plays an opaque role. The two dive deep­er and deep­er into a dark, dan­ger­ous world of greed, moral­i­ty and pow­er.

The Swiss direc­tor Andreas Fontana was born in Gene­va, but pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a pro­duc­tion assis­tant in Argenti­na. His first short film, Cotonov Van­ished, won an award at the Visions du Réel film fes­ti­val, Pedro M, 1981 was nom­i­nat­ed for the Swiss Film Prize. He wrote the script for his fea­ture film debut AZOR togeth­er with Mar­i­ano Llinás.

AZOR is at times cum­ber­some and told slow­ly, some­times bulky and dis­tant. The main char­ac­ters are told con­vinc­ing­ly, but it is in the nature of their char­ac­ters that we have a hard time fol­low­ing them and devel­op­ing sym­pa­thy for them. Fontana’s con­vinc­ing main cast (Fab­rizio Ron­gione as Yvan De Weil and Stéphanie Cléau as Inés De Wiel) helps us with this. The fact that the bru­tal­i­ty of the Argen­tine mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment is only hint­ed at in small scenes has an oppres­sive, con­vinc­ing effect.

CAST

Fab­rizio RONGIONE, Stéphanie CLÉAU, Car­men IRIONDO , Juan TRENCH, Igna­cio VILA, Pablo TORRE, Elli MEDEIROS, Gilles PRIVAT, Alexan­dre TROCKI, Agusti­na MUÑOZ

CREW

Pro­duc­ers – Euge­nia MUMENTHALER & David EPINEY, Nico­las BREVIÈRE and Vio­le­ta BAVA & Rosa MARTINEZ RIBERO 
Pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies – Ali­na Film, Local Films and Ruda Cine
Screen­writer – Andreas FONTANA in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mar­i­ano LLINAS
Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er – Gabriel SANDRU
Edi­tor – Nico­las DESMAISON

INFOS
Run­ning time – 100’
Lan­guage – French, Span­ish