La Sudestada

  • 86'
  • Argentina
  • 2023

Jorge Villafañez is a rotund, veteran private detective living alone in a high-rise apartment in Buenos Aires. Discreet and meticulous, he has a knack of making people open up in conversations. But when a new assignment puts him on the trail of Elvira, an experimental choreographer, the distance between the observer and the observed begins to collapse as Jorge descends into the rising waters of the Delta del Río de la Plata.

Adapted from Juan Sáenz Valiente’s eponymous comic book, Daniel Casabé and Edgardo Dieleke’s La Sudestada sets out like a riff on Vertigo (1958), but snakes like the Plata River to find its own path. Employing unusual edits, archival footage, surreal interludes, delightful genre shifts and passages of gestural abstraction, the film is a shape-shifting work that constantly reinvents itself and opens up into new directions.

Powered by a stellar lead performance by Juan Carrasco, La Sudestada endears us to Jorge even as it lets us glimpse his nastier side and horrific professional history. An unassuming reflection on age and urban loneliness, the film gradually accrues a spiritual dimension in the way it enables grace to manifest in a body fundamentally unprepared for it. The result is a thriller that tracks the movements of the soul.

 

Srikanth Srinivasan

Directors
Daniel Casabé, Edgardo Dieleke
Premiere
World premiere
Country of production
Argentina
Year
2023
Festival Edition
IFFR 2023
Length
86'
Medium
DCP
International title
Southern Storm
Language
Spanish
Producers
Alejandro Israel, Dana Najlis, Martín Granados, Edgardo Dieleke, Daniel Casabé
Production Companies
Ajimolido Films, Obol Film Club, Tenemos las máquinas
Sales
Ajimolido Films
Screenplay
Edgardo Dieleke, Daniel Casabé, Marin Mauregui, Agustina Liendo
Cinematography
Leonardo Hermo
Editor
Daniel Casabé, Andrés P. Estrada
Production Design
Tatu Ravotti
Sound Design
Lucas Larriera, Santiago Fumagalli
Music
Leonardo Martinelli
Cast
Katja Alemann, Juan Carrasco, Edgardo Castro
Directors
Daniel Casabé, Edgardo Dieleke
Premiere
World premiere
Country of production
Argentina
Year
2023
Festival Edition
IFFR 2023
Length
86'
Medium
DCP
International title
Southern Storm
Language
Spanish
Producers
Alejandro Israel, Dana Najlis, Martín Granados, Edgardo Dieleke, Daniel Casabé
Production Companies
Ajimolido Films, Obol Film Club, Tenemos las máquinas
Sales
Ajimolido Films
Screenplay
Edgardo Dieleke, Daniel Casabé, Marin Mauregui, Agustina Liendo
Cinematography
Leonardo Hermo
Editor
Daniel Casabé, Andrés P. Estrada
Production Design
Tatu Ravotti
Sound Design
Lucas Larriera, Santiago Fumagalli
Music
Leonardo Martinelli
Cast
Katja Alemann, Juan Carrasco, Edgardo Castro