Argentine Cinema Takes On The Dollar’s Strange Power

Award-winning filmmaker Francisco Lezama’s trilogy of short films captures how inflation and currency speculation have warped Argentine society, creating a dystopian split between those who can and can’t escape poverty using US dollars.

Francisco Lezama is one of the most prominent names in contemporary Argentine independent cinema. With a distinctive style that blends absurd humor and social reflection, his works delve into the tensions of a generation shaped by precarity and the nation’s obsession with the dollar. Through a personal lens and with a touch of irony, he has captured the struggles of a society shaped by neoliberalism and economic instability. His trilogy of short films explores how financial precarity impacts work, relationships, and desires, all set within a hostile and indifferent system.

Un Movimiento Extraño (An Odd Turn), a short film that won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale and has qualified for the Oscars, sharply portrays this duality between apathy and resistance among Argentine youth. In his acceptance speech in Berlin, Lezama condemned the cuts to cultural institutions under President Javier Milei’s libertarian government, emphasizing the impact of these policies on the film industry and cultural access for younger generations.

In this conversation with Jacobin, Lezama reflects on his work, the political and social context that inspires it, and his next cinematic challenge.

Martín Mosquera

After winning in Berlin, your three short films were screened together in Buenos Aires. Although they are scripted comedies, the fact that they share the same theme and were filmed over a decade gives them an almost documentary-like quality. Is that how you envisioned it?

Francisco Lezama

Yes, I think there’s some truth to that. It’s a distinctive quality of narrative cinema. The writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky used to say something along the lines of, “Over time, all fiction becomes documentary, and all documentaries reveal their fictional components.” I’ve worked in a film archive for many years, and that idea proves itself again and again. For example, the newsreels from the 1940s, which informed people before the arrival of television, can now seem like fiction, even comedies.

In Argentina, a practical understanding of economic dynamics is common among people of all social classes.

When I wrote the shorts, I had this in mind: I wanted the comedies to project over time as a kind of document on inflation. In 2015, when we shot the first short with Agostina Gálvez, it took fifteen pesos to buy a dollar. Nine years later, when all three films screened together at the MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), it took 1,200 pesos to buy a dollar. Argentina often feels like an inflationary dystopia.

Martín Mosquera

Inflation is rarely explored in cinema. Balancing the particularities of Argentina’s economic context with themes that resonate globally seems like a tough challenge.

Francisco Lezama

It’s curious how mainstream cinema has explored complex topics like language or semiotics — The Matrix, for example — but has rarely delved into economics, let alone inflation. This might be because the primary centers of the film industry are based in the United States and Europe, where inflation hasn’t been a significant concern until recently.

In Argentina, on the other hand, a practical understanding of economic dynamics is common among people of all social classes. When I wrote An Odd Turn, I wanted to narrate a currency run, which is an enigmatic and intricate phenomenon. I designed the plot with its twists — those “narrative excuses” Alfred Hitchcock spoke of — but during shooting, I focused on documenting how such an event transforms the urban atmosphere in Buenos Aires and the rest of the country.

Inflation erodes wages in pesos, pushing people to buy US dollars to take refuge. This kind of speculative betting, necessary to safeguard savings, affects many dimensions of life: work, relationships, even romance. In the face of inflation, financial speculation and esoteric fortune telling seem to have created a peculiar form of common language, one that is already deeply rooted in Argentina, almost like folklore.

In a currency run, society secretly divides into two groups: those who can afford to buy dollars, and those who can’t. It’s a silent yet profound rupture.

In a currency run, society secretly divides into two groups: those who can afford to buy dollars, and those who can’t. It’s a silent yet profound rupture. The first group enjoys a temporary relief, while the second watches their savings and wages erode in value. What lingers in the air is a mysterious fusion of melancholy and strain.

In that sense, I’m not completely sure if the short is universally understandable, but I trust that cinema goes beyond mere storytelling, displaying atmospheres, rhythms, and movements that transcend what seems rational. Like the American screwball comedies of the 1930s, which, unintentionally, captured the decadent atmosphere of the Great Depression. I hope that comedies, like poetry or music, can convey the intangible through the tangible.

Still from An Odd Turn. (36 Caballos)

Martín Mosquera

Latin American films have often explored life in gated communities. Do you think saving in dollars creates a similar fantasy of salvation?

Francisco Lezama

Absolutely. Except gated communities, with their high walls and physical barriers, are tangible. Buying dollars, being private and often virtual, is more unsettling and more cryptic. An Odd Turn revolves around this idea. A security guard foresees a currency run using a pendulum and purposefully gets fired. Using her severance pay, she invests in dollars, and as their value triples, she finds herself fantasizing about a romance with an employee of an illegal exchange house who couldn’t afford to buy dollars.

Ironically, to avoid spending her dollar savings, she takes on an even more precarious job than her last one. This obsession with holding onto dollars in the hope of profiting from another currency run parallels in many ways the mindset of gated communities: that fantasy of individual salvation as the surroundings struggle. This kind of individualism, combined with a distorted entrepreneurial narrative around gig-economy apps, has been aggressively promoted by influential libertarian voices.

Gated communities, with their high walls and physical barriers, are tangible. Buying dollars, being private and often virtual, is more unsettling and more cryptic.

The idealization of individual effort as the only path to progress, paired with the promise of eliminating public spending, enabled Javier Milei to strike a chord with precariously employed workers who began to reimagine themselves as entrepreneurs. It is curious how, under the guise of a rhetoric of “freedom,” a fantasy emerges: a better future stripped of rights, where the market reigns unchecked.

Milei’s libertarian policies are finding an echo in Donald Trump’s prospective administration, embodied by figures like Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) plan to shrink the size of the government and dismantle regulations. In the end, both appear united by a shared ideological blueprint.

Martín Mosquera

Your films portray the alienation of youth with accuracy. How do you reconcile the contrast between young people who, on the one hand, seem like automatons and, on the other, display a unique vitality in the way they look, desire, and move?

Francisco Lezama

Inflation has hit young Argentines hard, but after the pandemic, it also began affecting the United States and other parts of the world. Rent has become increasingly unaffordable, and many young people need to take on second jobs just to get by. The general feeling is one of struggle, of being unable to project themselves into the future.

At first glance, it might seem like this generation is stuck in a loop, trapped in limbo. But I wanted to portray a youth that, while appearing to have no place in the system, is still vital. Despite the hostile environment, the attempts to connect and propose new ways of relating are real and powerful. There’s resistance and creativity but also uncertainty. Inflation can cast this foggy effect over everything.

Martín Mosquera

In your acceptance speech in Berlin, you defended Argentina’s public film institutions. What’s your take on the recent victory of Trump and the rise of right-wing governments attacking culture?

Francisco Lezama

From the start, Milei has attacked Argentina’s film industry, both rhetorically and financially. He slashed subsidies and eliminated policies that allowed local independent cinema to find space in commercial theaters. The defunding of cultural institutions is restricting the appearance of alternative voices that diverge from the mainstream.

Still from An Odd Turn.

Libertarians have seized on the global decline in cinema attendance — which affects even Hollywood — to challenge the legitimacy of INCAA (the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts), which was established at a critical time for Argentine cinema, when national production was low and theaters were almost exclusively showing foreign films. Inspired partly by Italian neorealism and the New Wave cinemas of the 1960s, Argentine cinema sought to tell stories rooted in its own reality, distancing itself from both bourgeois melodramatic storylines and populist nationalism.

There’s resistance and creativity but also uncertainty. Inflation can cast this foggy effect over everything.

These attacks on the film industry are part of a global trend among far-right governments. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Victor Orbán in Hungary also cut public arts funding, branding it as unproductive or politically biased. Trump himself has displayed a hostile stance toward the US film industry or any artistic endeavor that dared to question or provoked debates.

Martín Mosquera

You’re working on your first feature. Will it continue exploring themes of money and the economy?

Francisco Lezama

I doubt it, though the topic tends to reappear. My next project, The Two Landscapes, explores the social and religious tensions triggered by the rising shift from Catholicism to evangelicalism, a phenomenon reshaping deeply rooted traditions. I’ll be shooting in Alta Gracia, Córdoba, and plan to move there for a few months. I want to once again merge comedy with elements of reality.