Infancia clandestina

It's 1979, Argentina. 12 year old Juan and his family returns after their exile in Cuba. They are guerrillas hunted by the military junta. Juan hides his true identity to everyone including his friends at school where they know him as Ernesto.

It's an Argentinian film with the potential of compelling characters. For a film of paranoia, we need to feel it much more. The filmmaking style is slow paced. It needs a lot more energy, and I'm not advocating some big action scene. There's got to be more intensity in this story.

The kids do good work. I like their characters. Their scenes have the intensity I'm talking about. I actually think the adults don't contribute as much. This feels like a lesser 'Running on Empty'. I do like the animation to break up some of the violence. It works well as from a child's point of view. Overall it tells an interesting story.

The movie is an emotional journey that takes its spectators to Argentina's military dictatorship of 1970's. Juan is a boy who struggles with his double identity he obtained for security purposes, as his parents are involved in combat against the regime. Ávila's script collaboration with Müller brings an amazing story that balances between fear of being discovered by military and love in the family, and consequently love of Juan and his classmate María.

Altogether with the script, the movie has absolutely engaging music, art direction and cinematography. Ávila's way of filming brings attention to every single detail and delivers unified piece of cinematographic art.

Actor Teo Gutiérrez Moreno is absolutely superb in his performance of the young boy and his life's struggle. Actress Natalia Oreiro delivers thrilling performance of revolutionary fighter and proves that she can portray a character that is as gentle as a mother to her son, as well as someone determined to fight the military regime. Moreover, actor Ernesto Alterio brings moments of humor into the story as his well-written character of uncle Beto.

The story is based on true events and the love the director dedicated to this movie can be felt in every single second. This outstanding movie will touch not only those familiar with Argentine regime of 70's, yet it will find its way to hearts of many cinema lovers too.

A totally dramatic, deep and emotional film, I highly recommend it.

I don't feel like talking about the movie a lot, rather than saying that I genuinely found it entertaining as of heartbreaking and tough: to see a kid not only has had a normal childhood and a regular parenting, and also doesn't really know how the common world works, but lives in a cartel-like undercover runaway suspense film that he sadly calls life. And that just rots within time.

The combo between main character and his uncle, in B&W its to my opinion one beautiful scene. Tough, meaningful, sad, and creative as well as visually pleasing.

I stumbled across this during quarantine and I'm really glad I did. It was not what I expected, but often times thats a good thing and this film was no exception. If you can get by the political aspects of the film, something I try to do, and just watch it for the story and archs of the characters, it is quite powerful. If you choose to research the political aspects of the film, I encourage you to do so. I'm not going to single out any performances as they were good-not great- however they were more than enough to fuel this magnificent script. I'll mark the production value with the same mark as the cast, but again, more than enough there to carry you on this journey. You will cry, you will cheer, the absence of either would make me question your humanity. Give it a go!