We Just Wanted the Dog to Bark: Interview with Mariano Llinás (Part 2) Hamed Sarrafi January 2026 Interviews Issue 116 For an in-depth analysis of Mariano Llinás’ evolving cinematic approach, read Terence W. Yang’s critical essay, also published in this issue. As a guest editor of Senses of Cinema for the dossier on El Pampero Cine, there was, after its preparation and publication, only one wish left unrealised: to complete the interview section with a truly face-to-face conversation with Mariano Llinás. Readers of the first part of the interview may recall its unusual circumstances – an exchange conducted entirely through voice notes and text messages, shaped by distance, contingency, and delay. For the second part, I gathered all the persistence and determination I could muster to make something different happen: a real video conversation, finally bringing us face to face. A few months after the dossier’s publication, this long-standing wish was fulfilled. Yet the moment it became possible, a new challenge emerged. After the epic scale of Extraordinary Stories (2008) and La Flor (2018), Llinás’s cinematic universe appeared to have shifted decisively toward documentary forms. This shift was not a retreat, but a transformation. By watching recent El Pampero productions – such as Un Andantino (2023), directed by Llinás’s close collaborator and fellow El Pampero member Alejo Moguillansky – one begins to perceive the contours of this evolving universe. Llinás’s recent films are dense with ideas, themes, and motifs that constantly intersect, overlap, and tangle with one another. It feels as though he is working through a reservoir of ideas that had long accompanied him – perhaps delayed or suspended during the eight-year process of making La Flor – and now released through a series of documentary explorations. These works confront the viewer with an extraordinary range of subjects: Argentina’s past and present; politics, cinema, music, painting, and architecture; nature and geography; Llinás’s own life, temperament, anxieties, fragility, stubbornness, and humour; his family history, particularly the figure of his father; and the dense network of friendships that shape his creative world. They also gesture toward other projects still in development, and toward the reasons certain potential films no longer felt emotionally necessary to him. Beyond all this, they offer a rare and concrete understanding of what El Pampero Cine means – not only as a collective identity, but as a working method, a production mechanism, and an ethical stance toward filmmaking. In this sense, these films demystify El Pampero, revealing how its members participate in, challenge, and refine one another’s work in pursuit of something meaningful for the author. Despite these formal shifts, Llinás has not fundamentally changed since Extraordinary Stories, La Flor, or even his early documentary Balnearios (2002). He remains the same figure: part detective, part storyteller, advancing step by step, opening new chapters as he goes. He continues to search for truths – about Julio Llinás/his father, about Ignacio Corsini, about himself, and about Argentine history – through books, documents, songs, and fragments of lived experience. Even in his documentaries, each movement uncovers another layer, another question. He remains a storyteller who engages us through multiple chapters, whether directly related or seemingly tangential, driven by exploration and discovery. This spirit of exploration is accompanied by a consistent sense of humour. If La Flor playfully stages the struggle of setting up a film frame, Popular tradición de esta tierra (popular tradition of this land, 2024) finds Llinás performing a silent-comedy gesture worthy of Laurel and Hardy while attempting to paste an advertisement onto a wall. These moments are not digressions; they are integral to his method, revealing how discovery often emerges through play. Popular tradición de esta tierra In Clorindo Testa (2022), Llinás initially claims that he wanted to make a film about an artist admired by his father, or perhaps about a book his father had written on that artist. Yet the film quickly exceeds these premises. It is neither a biography nor a portrait of his father – yet it contains both, and much more. Watching Clorindo Testa, I was reminded of a key idea articulated in the documentary trilogy Mondongo (Mondongo: El Equilibrista, Mondongo: Retrato de Mondongo, Mondongo: Kunst der Farbe), concerning the complex relationship between artists, materials, and artworks. One could argue that Clorindo Testa retrospectively clarifies Mondongo itself: “The painter he has chosen – his friend – does not serve his objectives; rather, he serves his rivals. One could almost say that he serves the opposite side. He cannot abandon the book – or, in this case, the film – for which he has already committed himself, nor can he produce a work against his friend. So, what does the critic do? He falsifies his arguments to escape the dilemma.” Originally, Mondongo was conceived as Llinás’s attempt to make a film about his artist friends – the Mondongo collective, who had designed the iconic poster for Extraordinary Stories. The project ended with the rupture of that friendship. Was it a failure? Or did it succeed precisely by revealing the tension and impossibility at the heart of such an endeavour? By exposing the challenge – from his side, from theirs, and from the situation itself – the film arguably achieves more than any harmonious portrait could. The two parts of Corsini (Corsini interpreta a Blomberg y Maciel [2021], Popular tradición de esta tierra [2024]) adopt a more playful path, reworking the lyrics of Héctor Blomberg and the music of Enrique Maciel through performance, repetition, and variation. These films revolve around creation and re-creation, asking whether history, figures, and cultural memory can be altered and reconstructed through music, performance, casting, and repetition. The first part moves outward – through Argentine history, places, and figures – while the second turns inward, toward the singer- Ignacio Corsini’s inner world and artistic identity. A third part, currently in production, suggests that this process remains open. Once again, Llinás resists totalisation: what could have been a single extended work becomes a series structured by continuity and variation. This abundance of subjects and formal strategies defined the challenge I faced as an interviewer: how to address so many ideas – some newly articulated, others inherited from earlier works – within a limited time, with a filmmaker who seems perpetually in motion, traveling, lecturing, writing, editing, supporting other El Pampero members, and still finding time for his family. In the end, the interview unfolded over nearly six months, extending precisely to the final submission deadline. Like Llinás’s own films, it began playfully, passed through reflections on his recent work, and gradually arrived at a different emotional register – one marked by melancholy, uncertainty, and sorrow. This was not sorrow rooted in personal distance, but in the shadow of ongoing catastrophes elsewhere in the world, far from the interviewee’s country, yet impossible for the interviewer to ignore. This interview could, in truth, have continued indefinitely. I wanted to ask about every detail, every decision, every surprise in Llinás’s creative process – even about his relationship to writing and typing, moments that occasionally recalled Van Gogh’s paintings of the books he was reading. Certain shots of books/moments in these films raised questions I never had time to pursue. Perhaps such conversations belong to another format: a book, or even a documentary film. Yet, as suggested in the after-credits of Mondongo and echoed in Popular tradición de esta tierra – through reflections on the “melancholy of the fatherland” – Llinás’s movement between the personal and the collective, between private memory and local history, ultimately allows him to “represent Argentine” cinema with remarkable clarity and honesty. * * * You can’t imagine how many years I’ve been waiting for this moment. Finally, it’s happening… Yes, yes… it’s as if you’re a knight of the Crusades standing before your Holy Grail – and I’m standing right here beside you [laughs]. And believe me, I do know how long it’s been, because I’m the one who kept postponing it. So yes, I know exactly how many years. But now, at last, let’s begin. There’s something fundamental that has always worried me. Watching your films – especially the second part of La Flor and the second Mondongo (Mondongo II: Retrato de Mondongo) – I realised that when two people share a deep love, whether in friendship, collaboration, or any bonds, clashes are inevitable because people look through different lenses and perspectives. So, I wonder: how much have I bothered you all these years – especially this last year? Each time I text you, I ask myself: Am I disturbing him? Am I disturbing them – El Pampero? Am I intruding on your creative process, putting you in a situation you don’t want to be in? Even with this interview, I feared it might not end well because of that. Of course you disturb me – absolutely, every time! [laughs] But you’re also extremely brave, and you persist. And that’s why you’ve earned the right to disturb. It’s a gentle disturbance, yes, but still a disturbance. Each one of your messages has interrupted not only the creative process, but life itself – especially my moments of idleness. And idleness is the hardest thing for me. It’s almost like a disease – I can’t face it. The moment I tell myself, Today I will do nothing, I will rest, that is precisely when your messages arrive! Well, I’m truly sorry – but I’m glad this is finally happening… You are not sorry. That’s not true. You’re joyful about every moment of it! Honestly, I am happy this happened. It’s a kind of guilty pleasure, but it happened regardless. Guilty pleasure? Okay! You deserve the guilt. Mondongo II: Retrato de Mondongo Mariano, I believe something fundamental changed after La Flor in terms of the way you make films now. I am talking specifically about Episode 4 of La Flor, where you made a comedic self-reflection – a meta-commentary on the actual process of making the film, working with the actresses. There, you used Walter Jakob as an alter-ego of yourself. Absolutely. But specifically, it was done with my voice. He doesn’t use his own; my voice is dubbed onto him. Did you notice that? Yes, I noticed it. However, since then, your films have changed – from Clorindo Testa to Popular tradición de esta tierra. They now seem to search for answers to existential questions about yourself and your identity. You now put yourself directly in the frame, becoming the subject of the films, and these films excavate your own history – your father, your friends, your identity. Additionally, your recent work engages deeply with Argentine culture and history, revisiting turning points or significant historical moments, visiting museums, old books and records. Beyond that, in these films, one sees directly the essence of El Pampero Cine, in the constant rewriting of ideas, the fluid editing process, the way any moment can change the course of a film. Altogether, your last six films had formed a unified exploration of Argentina, of yourself, and of El Pampero as a collective identity. That’s not quite like this. The real question is: How did it happen? But before that, let me say this – I don’t agree with your description of the situation. I understand why you say it, but I wouldn’t accept it. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened, because I believe what actually happened was somewhat different. I truly believe something did happen, but it’s difficult to articulate, because it concerns myself, and I am thinking through that process even now. When you suggest I’m asking myself metaphysical or profound questions, I simply don’t see it that way. If such questions are there, they are certainly not part of any planned scheme. I don’t share your view. You may be right, and I may be wrong – but let me explain to you from my own perspective… Please, I am dying for this moment! The main thing about La Flor and the pictures that came after has to do with… well, let me explain. One thing I began to notice was what I let go of from one film to the next. Since I’m in my studio, let me take advantage of whatever I have near me to explain it clearly. [At this moment, he picks up a copy of Hergé’s Tintin – King Ottokar’s Sceptre – and shows it to me.] I can use this. What I gave up was my obsession with this – composition. In the beginning – my first film, and Extraordinary Stories too – we had an extremely poor camera. Primitive, really, in the way it captured the image. So, we needed the image to be neat inside the frame. Everything we imagined visually came from that lack of information inside the little chip of that camera. So, what we did in those early years was develop a visual style that wasn’t just about taste – that we liked Tintin frames, yes – but also because that was the kind of image the camera could actually give us. When we finally got better cameras – still cheap, but much better in how they registered the image – we began to loosen up. The shots became wider, more open. Everything became about getting more at ease with the camera. In the beginning, the most important thing for me was that every frame I set, every shot, conformed to a strict compositional ideal. I needed absolute control of the frame – the colours, the horizon, the way the characters moved inside it. [He again points to the Tintin cover.] Look at this. Hergé, as an artist, is like Hitchcock in his level of control. Watching Hitchcock’s colour films, you feel he has absolute authority over everything – Godard said he is “a universe in control.” I wanted something like that in my first three films. I needed an image that was completely in my hands. All the narrative elements in La Flor – why the characters go here, why they become witches, why they search for books in the Casanova section – those were inventions that supported a particular visual interest: taking a part of the world, like the province of Buenos Aires [he gestures to a map], and painting it in a specific way. It was a method of taming the world into a visual style. When La Flor ended, I let go of that obsession – that almost painful obsession with composition and colour. I started making films differently. When I look at the Corsini interpreta a Blomberg & Maciel, it is not that I dislike the framing, but it’s a film where I deliberately loosened that visual style. For instance, it deals with things that used to drive me crazy, like the sun. If you watch Extraordinary Stories, except for the river sequence, you will hardly see a sunny day. I was obsessed with cloudy and rainy days. In Corsini interpreta a Blomberg & Maciel, I gave that up. It was the loss of one kind of strict care for the frame. And why did I do that? Because I realised, I needed to make more films. I had many interests and different concerns – moving away from pure fiction and from pure colour… Corsini interpreta a Blomberg & Maciel But there are many subjects that La Flor tried to address through that 13-hour-plus film… I wouldn’t say La Flor was about nothing – it’s about many things, mostly related to our company’s work. But I needed to include other aspects: history, painting, and many other stories I carried with me. My curiosity, which has been with me since the very beginning of my life, demanded its own pictures. In my earlier films, those impulses were there, but only as excuses. I wanted to make films that weren’t excuses for fiction – films that could truly dig into the outside world. The first film I made after that, Concierto para la batalla de El Tala, which is a very small picture, marked the first time I engaged directly with my interest in Argentine history. Corsini interpreta a Blomberg y Maciel, again, is a way of getting into the songs I love. Yes, I portray myself there, but it’s also a way – it’s difficult to say this – of educating or preparing the audience for another style of filmmaking. It’s very hard to make documentary films without turning myself into a leading character, almost a comedian. So, I had to redesign things. It took me six – maybe seven – films to develop a new way of speaking. I say speaking because I was no longer behind the camera building the image through colour and composition. I was somewhere else – in front of the camera, making the thing happen. The other major element that appeared in these new pictures is montage. That became the central thing. I no longer controlled as much during the shoot – almost not at all. These are films where I’m simply moving around in my car, going from place to place, and the camera just comes along. It’s no longer about the strict frame; the control comes entirely in the editing. I learned to make films without thinking through every shot beforehand. I would shoot everything sans souci – without caring, as the French say. Of course, that’s an exaggeration. I do care, because I know my task, I know my craft. I know how to set a frame; it’s not that I forgot. But the proportion of time I spent watching the frame became extremely small compared to my earlier films. I believe this shift… perhaps it comes with getting a little older. The energy required to direct in the field – to construct those precise frames – would be too much now. I’m not sure I could still direct the films I directed before. I don’t know if I’m the same person. So, to put it simply: I traded the composition, the camera work, for the editing. That became the way to maintain control. It’s more than speaking about myself; it’s that I learned how to make another kind of film that would be personal in a direct way. The audience would feel that someone is speaking to them, and they could tell exactly who is speaking – the narrator, or me. That, I believe, is what happened. I had made a very big film – La Flor – after Extraordinary Stories, which was also big. And everyone who liked those films was waiting for something. I needed to get away from that because I had had enough. I needed to go to many other places. This process taught me how to deal with all these things quickly and sharply. Now I am finishing – well, not finishing, but in the final steps of – my Jorge Luis Borges film, and I think that one will be the big one. I don’t know if it will be the good one, but it is going to be the big one. Everything that has been done in these years will be there, perhaps repeating. I’ll come back to this Borges film later, since you’ve started teasing us – almost like a Marvel movie, leaving little Easter eggs at the end, telling us what’s “to be continued.” For example, I still don’t know whether the end of Popular tradición de esta tierra is pointing to Corsini 3, or to the Borges film, or something else. The Borges film hasn’t been announced. Then it should be Corsini 3. So, are you making it a trilogy? Yes, of course. In Bucharest. And you’ll travel there to make the third part? They are. They’re sending messages about the Bucharest thing at this very moment, while we’re talking. [He checks his phone.] No – this message is about something else. Perhaps we’re going to Britain to make that film! Perhaps you can appear in Corsini 3, you know. I would really like to jump into your frame – even if it’s as a character you instantly kill off, like in Police Squad! You deserve that, of course. And you will. If we go to Britain, we can arrange to kill you exactly as you wish. [He laughs.] [A few months after this exchange, Llinás travelled to Bucharest, where the third part of Corsini was filmed] Speaking of editing/montage, which you mentioned as something you have been increasingly focused on, I know this is a highly theoretical subject and could open a long debate, but my question is more specific and practical: at what stage does montage truly begin for you? Does it begin during writing, when you imagine a sequence of events, images, or intersections? Or does it primarily emerge during the editing process itself, when ideas are connected, rewritten, and restructured through the material? In your recent films, movement, travel, and narrative shifts seem to be produced largely through editing. I am curious to understand how this process works for you – not in general terms, but specifically in relation to your own films. In my most recent films, I write at the same time as I edit. The need to write comes directly from the editing process. Sometimes I write beforehand – like in the Borges-related film – but in the previous ones, writing happened because of editing, as a consequence of it. There is no script that guides the montage. It’s the opposite. The montage asks for words. Clorindo Testa Clorindo Testa Clorindo Testa I’d like to observe a recurring presence in your films – a sense of the ominous, of something approaching or lurking beneath the surface. It runs through Extraordinary Stories and La Flor, and it reappears in Mondongo, Clorindo Testa, even in Popular tradición de esta tierra. There is often a feeling of mystery, of unease, of a curse or a shadow hovering over the narrative. I’m wondering whether this operates as a kind of MacGuffin – a device you inject into the films to pull the audience along – or whether it’s a form of homage to figures like Hitchcock or Fritz Lang. Or perhaps it comes from elsewhere – Tintin, for instance. There always seems to be a detective-like structure: a search, a mystery to be uncovered. Do you see this as a method, a technique, or something intrinsic to you? Yes – what you’re really talking about is the presence of evil. The idea of evil in my films. But I don’t think there is evil in Balnearios, nor in Extraordinary Stories. I see those films as clearly without evil. Evil appears for the first time in Castro, Alejo Moguillansky’s film, which is also the first El Pampero film that truly portrays evil – some kind of distress, that ominous quality you mentioned. Then, of course, it becomes explicit in La Flor, especially in the second episode, where for the first time there appears the idea of a brotherhood of wicked people, a shadow army beneath everything – an association of the wicked. That idea later reappears, most clearly in Mondongo. Mondongo is the film where I deal most directly with evil itself. As for the Corsini films – I’m not sure where you find evil in Popular tradición de esta tierra. I don’t see it there, except perhaps in the Romanian section at the end, but not in Corsini himself. For me, Mondongo and La Flor are the films where wickedness is truly present, and it’s something that deeply interests me. There’s also an important distinction between Hitchcock and Fritz Lang when it comes to evil. Hitchcock’s evil is always bright, playful – even his darkest characters never fully embody evil. He is always playing. Fritz Lang, on the other hand, is the true master of evil. No one in the history of narrative has portrayed evil as profoundly as Lang. I am interested in that form of evil. But at the same time, I’ve always been an optimistic narrator. I gravitate toward light and brightness – perhaps because my own personal history included very dark moments when I was younger. So, my approach to evil is always cautious, almost fearful. I do believe in the devil, in a sense, and I think evil must be approached with extreme care. I would like that ominous presence to be perceived as awareness – a consciousness of something wicked that exists, something to be feared and avoided. In Popular tradición de esta tierra, though, I feel that sense of evil emerges early on – especially in the way you talk about the new government and its relationship to cinema. Then, there are images of the empty towns, the deserted cities, the absence of people – they create unease, a sadness, something unresolved. And even in Balnearios, the hotel functions like a mysterious space, as if something has happened there. That sense of something not quite right feels constant. Even in Clorindo Testa, the darker elements are brought directly into the frame. Yes – but that’s where we need to distinguish between mystery and evil. They are not the same. You’re right that I’ve always played with the dark side. And yes, that absolutely comes from Tintin, which is full of mystery and darkness, but where light always prevails. Tintin is shining, even when surrounded by danger. In my more recent films, I’ve begun to confront evil itself more directly. But take Popular tradición de esta tierra the moment you mention – the government, the political darkness – that scene is actually a victory. It’s the victory of our group being together in that room, playful and joyful, while the government remains outside. Still, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps wickedness enters the film despite my intentions. After the very dark period of Mondongo, Popular tradición de esta tierra was made with great joy. But the fantastic always deals with what is hidden. What you may be sensing is not evil itself, but the hidden – the presence of ghosts. There are always ghosts lurking. Beyond evil or a sense of the ominous, I also sense the influence of Abbas Kiarostami in your work – perhaps revealed through all those long conversations inside cars, or moments when the camera stays in the car and the dialogue continues only through voices, without showing the speaking character. To be honest, Kiarostami is not one of the directors I know most thoroughly. In fact, there are some major works of his that I either haven’t seen or that I only watched when I was very young. I really should rewatch his entire body of work. That said, even with the limited knowledge I have of his films, his influence on my work has been enormous – perhaps greater than that of many filmmakers I know much better. What I take most strongly from him is the way he radically expanded the field of narration: what can be narrated, and how. In my opinion, he was one of the greatest narrators in the history of cinema. He mastered the art of telling stories without stories – or, rather, telling stories where narrative seems to disappear. That is what influenced me most profoundly. When I teach classes, when I talk about cinema, I often return to what I learned from him. In particular, the first of the famous five long shots he admired in Ozu – the one with the shore and the small piece of wood splitting in two. That moment may be the single most important lesson I’ve ever taken from any filmmaker. It’s something everyone should learn. A director who leaves behind such a clear, essential lesson deserves the highest level of attention. And I must admit that I haven’t given Kiarostami that level of attention – certainly not to the same extent as filmmakers like Hitchcock or Jean Renoir. I still need to become an expert. And then there’s the ending of Zendegi va digar hich (And Life Goes On, 1992) – the car in Koker climbing the slope. I think it may be the greatest ending in the history of cinema. Let’s return to your renewed style of filmmaking. I understand that the change in directing method came first, but you also mentioned other concerns and subjects you wanted to address – some of which you may not yet have had time to talk about. Take the first part of Mondongo (Mondongo: El Equilibrista), for instance. On the surface, it’s about you and your artist friends – the Mondongo group – a friendship that didn’t end well and eventually collapsed. But the film is also about painting, about the people who help artists construct those beautiful images. That’s exactly what El Pampero does: depicting not only the creator, but also the importance of the people who make the creation possible. That’s what I see at the end of that first part of Mondongo: a depiction of everyone who came together to build that beautiful artwork. Are you talking about those colourful objects created for the exhibition? Mondongo: El Equilibrista Yes. I don’t agree with you about the art. I don’t believe that. I think it’s absolutely phony. The important thing there is… I don’t know, Hamed, I’m not really interested in that film. I think it’s a completely false thing. You can see those tricks from Mondongo standing among the workers – the people who actually built that colourful soap structure. If you watch carefully, at the end of the first part, the Mondongo guy smiles, and you can tell he’s lying. He is smiling while the workers are genuinely happy because they finished their work. He, meanwhile, is absolutely rotten. He’s there with a phony, fake smile. Watch it again. You’ll see the face of a liar, of a coward. He’s standing there with a false gesture on his face. So, the film’s ability to show that – to show a lying prick – is what matters. I insist: watch it again! I’d like to ask you something important about the Mondongo project. Don’t you think that, if the project were to “fail” – which I don’t believe it does – it would be because of two main factors? First, the difference in personalities, perspectives, and approaches. And second, the difference in medium. In the films, you try to portray them, and they try to shape how they are portrayed. In the second part especially, I sense a struggle: a difficulty in directing them, in placing them within the mise en scène. It feels as though the clash between artistic mediums eventually creates separation. In the end, I think you succeeded in showing exactly that difference – your approach versus theirs. The first part seems to examine their approach to art – at least the part of it you disagree with – while still acknowledging their achievements. I genuinely think they are great artists. The third part, meanwhile, feels like your attempt to engage with their work through another medium: those coloured cubes, approached differently. And at the centre lies the challenge that ultimately separates you. This reminded me of something from Clorindo Testa, which feels almost prophetic in relation to Mondongo. Let me quote a line from that film: “The painter he has chosen, his friend, does not serve his objectives; he rather serves his rivals. One could almost say that he serves the opposite. He cannot abandon the book for which he has already been paid, nor can he write a book against his friend. So, what does the critic do? He falsifies his arguments to get rid of the problem.” Clorindo Testa Clorindo Testa Clorindo Testa Clorindo Testa Clorindo Testa Clorindo Testa [He laughs.] That’s a good one. I’d never thought of that before. You’re right – but it’s also something else. My father admired Clorindo Testa his entire life, and they remained friends. The relationship between them was clear. My father wanted to prove that Clorindo was a surrealist, and he wasn’t. He discovered that through writing. It’s a good story. But Mondongo is different. During the making of the film, I discovered a deep difference between their approach to work and mine – and that difference has to do with morality. For me, they behaved like cowards. And you may ask: how can an artist be a coward? An artist is a coward when he hides, when he can show but chooses not to – because showing would be dangerous, uncomfortable, or bad for business. They chose how to be portrayed. Not because they didn’t understand how to show themselves, but because showing the truth would put them at risk. That, for me, is cowardice. It’s a weak relationship with art. I believe an artist’s morality is to go into the arena – to expose oneself like a bullfighter facing the bull. That’s what I found them incapable of doing. For me, Mondongo is a very important film – painful, but essential. It taught me what it means to be a true artist devoted to truth. I’ve always played with truth, with mischief, with ambiguity – but the real ethical line is never taking the safe position. However, beyond whatever you depicted or recorded, I want to emphasise that you always manage to find something else to tell. I see you doing this constantly – for example, in La Flor, how episodes three and four are entangled together: suddenly, there are several more stories to tell, and that temptation continues into your new films. It’s always there with you. [At this moment, Alejo enters our frame.] Oh, Alejo – hi. I admit I am a troublesome man for your whole company. Alejo laughs like a character in a spy thriller and disappears back into the office to work on his project. Llinás continues, laughing with us. Unbelievable. Yes, but it’s very different… Listen: the way we work – what happens here – and I hope you get to know it personally someday, is the task of my life and of our lives. It’s the way we built a group of people who have managed to stay together for almost 25 years, working, sharing, getting along, and continuing to make a bunch of pictures without a single thing to be ashamed of. That, of course, is the great pride of my life. And I think it’s the pride of everyone involved. It’s also something I don’t see many examples of. The way we work – the way we manage to understand and include other people’s work – is quite unique. When you compare El Pampero with the atmosphere around Mondongo in the first film – it’s very different. There, the people putting in the colourful bricks are employees. You don’t have employees; you have people who are with you. It’s different. And it’s difficult to portray the way you work. In La Flor Episode 4, for instance, we portray ourselves as quarrelling, crying, fighting, and the girls as constantly complaining. It’s fake. We were acting a disturbance that wasn’t there. Everything was merry and pleasant; everyone was a comrade. It’s strange, and it’s something I usually don’t speak about because it’s ours. We know the cost of it – how difficult it was, how difficult it still is – and how we manage to keep it going. But still… perhaps we did speak about this when you watched the second Mondongo picture? I don’t remember. No, we haven’t. I remember sending you a long text after watching the second part because I was so impressed by the way you portrayed yourself and Agustín, and how you showed the moment when your two groups of artists and friends separated from each other… You see, there are some very violent moments. You don’t see them explicitly, but I hope you feel them. For instance, Agustín and I would have a very violent quarrel. The other guys are there, and Mondongo is insulting me – it’s a very violent moment. But at the end, after we break up, Agustín and I are still there – out in the countryside, shooting. I’m wearing my boots, he’s wearing his ridiculous yellow jacket, with the dogs in the road. And that is the happy ending, because we are still there. After having those dramatic conflicts, we are still there. And the conflict is not. We are there – but Mondongo are not. The Mondongo guys are alone; we are not alone. They are isolated, even if they portray fake friendships. We have each other, and many others. We can deal with extremely violent things – even when one friend punches the other in the face. Nothing will tear us apart or separate what we have created. I realised this in that moment on the road, when I saw the wheat was red. It was very beautiful. I said, “Let’s stop here. Let’s do something.” I told the camera operator, “Shoot us. Shoot both of us making a picture.” It’s very nice for me to see that. A couple of years earlier, in another film that has never been edited – and probably never will be – at the end of the pandemic, I had the same impulse. We were doing a performance dressed in military suits, doing clown things. At the end we stood with our team, our backs to the camera. And I had this impulse – before I could articulate it – of putting my arm on his shoulder. I was about to cry in that moment. It was very revealing, because we are not the kind of physically affectionate friends who hug. We usually just say hello and shake hands. We are not very… Latin in that way. We are distant. But when I did this [he gestures] it was extremely moving. So, in these pictures, you can also see the evolution of a friendship. It’s not necessarily about answering “who am I?” But yes, it is about showing – about trying to include – the relationship with my best friend. I understand, but when I asked “who you are,” I meant that at one point you seemed to be looking for your father, and through his eyes you were really talking about yourself. That was in Clorindo Testa. Even in Mondongo, there’s a kind of self-exposure or self-criticism. You were half-naked, dancing on a stool. I felt you were intentionally showing some moment of weakness, of fragility in your life. Indeed, indeed. But one thing: I was not naked. I would never take off my pants! Yes, not totally – just the top! Don’t get confused about that, because some people misunderstood! I was keeping my pants on. But yes, I think you are right. I think your reading is correct. I’m not entirely comfortable admitting it, because I don’t think in those terms, but I guess you’re right. I would add something else, something people have remarked upon that touches me very much: In the last part of Mondongo, some people say they can tell that my wife and I… well, I’m not going to repeat what they said, but they say they can tell that we like each other. And that is something… why not? It’s not that I was trying to show that. I don’t know – maybe it’s a kind of confession, an involuntary confession. There is something there. But the important point is: you say I was willing to do this. I wasn’t. I was trying to do something else; I didn’t have that intention. Of course, I’m not blind. When in Clorindo Testa I end one of the films in a hotel room with my son – the same character in the hotel room but now with a child – I know it suggests something. But I’m not very aware of it, nor is it something I seek. I don’t even want it to be sad. I’m telling you, even the words you use betray you. You reference the “melancholy of my Argentina.” I’m sure that line or that musical idea appears in Popular tradición de esta tierra. “Melancholy image of the…” …of my fatherland, right? That melancholy is palpable. It’s in the ending of Clorindo Testa, and in Mondongo: El Equilibrista, when Agustín jokes that you “represented Argentina well.” At the end of Popular tradición de esta tierra, it ends in nature, but the feeling is one of profound melancholy. It’s there, whether consciously or unconsciously, across these six films, in both form and content. You’re still the same Mariano who wants to tell so many things. Another example: In Popular tradición, the story begins with Corsini, then you talk about the meaning of the word “Pampero”, but suddenly, the film takes a détour, where you go to that city of poets. You had the urge to tell the story of that city with the poets’ names on the streets, and you found a way to fit it in. It had to be there. I think this is part of your creative process, which is, as you said, not fully improvised. No, it wasn’t improvised. I knew I wouldn’t improvise. The scene was more… manipulated. What I mean is: I was there with the singer, with Agustín and the others, and I thought, “We can have this kind of detour here; this could be interesting.” I knew that. I said, “Look at that sign with that name. Shoot that.” I knew I wanted to make that short sequence about the poets’ street signs. It was like a caprice – something I would hide inside the film to get my things done. It’s not improvised for me, but it is improvised for the rest of the people. The main complaint from the crew is that they don’t know anything. They don’t know what they’re doing or why they are shooting this or that. I’m the only one who holds the plan. I don’t think that’s the best way to make films, but I will try to share more. They say I don’t tell them anything – I just say, “Do this.” And I won’t tell them more because I want to surprise them… which is ridiculous, because they don’t need to be surprised. Concierto para la batalla de El Tala In the end, there is a strong connection which connected Corsini interpreta a Blomberg & Maciel, Popular tradición de esta tierra, parts of the Mondongo trilogy, and Concierto para la batalla de El Tala. All of these films had a focus on the act of creation itself – not so much the final result, but the process: how art is fabricated, made, and produced. Of course they’re connected. All of them – Corsini parts one and two, the Mondongo films, Clorindo Testa. All the films I made after La Flor include their own fabrication as an argument, as a subject. That’s what I’ve been doing. The key difference is that fabrication itself becomes an adventure. Earlier films included adventures within the narrative. Here, I realised that the adventure could be the process of making the film itself. And that process can contain comedy, risk, fantasy, enigma – all of it. So I don’t think the difference is simply that these films show their own making. The real difference is that they try to engage with something we might call reality – something that exists outside the film itself. Clorindo Testa, El Tala – these deal with things that were not invented by the plot. That’s why they are documentaries: they deal with something that pre-exists the argument, the story. In these movies, it appeared that you have also devoted a significant amount of screen time to the act of typing. It feels as though typing has begun to replace voiceover or traditional narration within the structure of the films. I know this doesn’t apply uniformly – for instance, Corsini interpreta a Blomberg & Maciel and Popular tradición de esta tierra still rely heavily on music and text as narrative elements – but text itself plays a crucial role in works such as Lejano interior and Concierto para la batalla de El Tala, even though I couldn’t quite connect with El Tala. About typing – especially in Mondongo, because it’s the only film where you actually see the typing as it happens. In the others, the words are already there, already written. The typing in Mondongo was something I discovered – well, maybe realised is the right word. I realised that typing could be a cinematic action, as strong and as thrilling as walking, riding a horse, or driving a car. Of course, that may sound extreme. But I wanted to see whether it could truly function as an action. Cinema is fundamentally made of actions. So why not try the idea that a sentence, or a verse, developing in front of your eyes – at the very moment it is created, at the moment it is born – could itself be a valid cinematic action? Why shouldn’t that moment count as action within a cinematic composition? You don’t like El Tala? I love it. I wouldn’t say I dislike it. I couldn’t quite connect with it, perhaps because it relies almost entirely on text and music. I feel that if I had encountered a more visually articulated version, I might have been able to understand and absorb it more fully. I don’t understand that. What is it that you saw? It has many scenes and images. I may be mistaken, but when I think back to the first time, I saw the film – especially in comparison with Corsini interpreta a Blomberg & Maciel – I realise I remember Corsini much more vividly. There, you actively recreate the verses and transform them into images. From your first documentary through Popular tradición de esta tierra, when your on-screen persona begins to speak and tell stories, I feel guided; I love that mode, and I can follow the narrative completely, both emotionally and intellectually. With Concierto para la batalla de El Tala, however, I feel I need to spend much more time finding an emotional and intellectual entry point into the film’s context. I think the issue is that Concierto para la batalla de El Tala needs to be approached as something fundamentally different. In this case, you’re not seeing the sentence or the verse being created; instead, you’re reading subtitles. And that changes everything. It’s not the same experience as understanding something while it is being spoken or formed in front of you. You can sense that a verse is developing – that something is growing – but you don’t fully grasp what that growth means in the moment. So, the relationship to the film becomes different. I understand that this makes it extremely difficult to create a “perfect” film of this kind. Ideally, such a work would need to exist in multiple languages – almost rewritten for each viewer. Concierto para la batalla de El Tala To be honest, what stayed with me most strongly from Concierto para la batalla de El Tala was the way the music was recorded. It’s quite important! Don’t forget the battle scene. Yes – and the battle, even if not in its details. The faces – yours, Gabriel’s, Agustín’s. And now that I think about it, toward the end, something structural changes. That’s actually the moment where I begin to get closer to what you were doing. So, could you tell me why you chose this particular structure and format for Concierto para la batalla de El Tala? I’m not entirely sure what you mean by structure. I mean the decision to combine text with music production, and to present the battle scenes in a way that resembles modern fencing rather than a traditional battle. The structure is something else. You’re talking about the process of using what we might call a script – the printed words appearing on screen – alongside music and the act of recording music. I honestly don’t know why I chose that, exactly. I think it’s because, after using many words in my previous works – mostly as voiceover, as sound, as something close to music – I wanted words to leave that musical state and become images. The image would be the words, and the image would also be the music. So instead of words and music functioning as a score, they would become the performers themselves. That’s why I feel this film is one step ahead of the previous ones. Earlier films relied on human performers. Here, the human performers share the stage with non-human players – words, letters, music. I thought it was a rather democratic experiment. As for fencing: that’s simply what it is. There isn’t such a big difference between fencing and battle. Of course, battle involves more people and more imagery, but violence exists in any form of combat. I liked the idea of including combat inside a recording studio. In these more recent films, we also encounter moments of silence – something that feels rare in your earlier work, where there is almost always speech or music. These moments of silence seem to play a new role. Is silence something new for you? I don’t really know what you mean by silence. I don’t think I’m a particularly silent filmmaker – or even a silent human being. I don’t see silence as a defining feature of my work. Perhaps you’ve noticed certain quiet moments, but it’s hard for me to identify them as something new – especially when compared to the long silent passage in La Flor, which lasts maybe 15 or 30 minutes. If you want silence, you can find it there. I mean moments like the ending of Clorindo Testa, when you spend time with your child in nature. Or certain passages in Mondongo first and third part. Even the time spent typing – as you said, a cinematic action – changes the atmosphere. That’s why it feels new. Though now that I think of it, in La Flor Episodes Five and Six, people stop talking and we are left with images alone. So perhaps it’s not entirely new. Ah, I understand the kind of silence you’re referring to. Yes – there’s more freedom with time inside the scenes now. The film doesn’t always try to pump everything up. It can afford not to pump. And I enjoy that very much – this idea of not pumping. There’s another aspect in the sounds of Mondongo: your choice of soundtracks. In the first part, you use Vertigo. To me, Vertigo is about deception, about a love that is manipulated and ultimately destroyed. In the second part, you move to Psycho. It feels as though these musical choices mirror your emotional relationship to the films themselves. Beyond that, you consistently show a remarkable sensitivity to music – sometimes music even becomes the subject of the film. Could you talk about how you choose soundtracks, how you work with composers, and how sound functions in your films? Hamed, I must be honest: I don’t think that way. I come from a surrealist education. We don’t make symbolic interpretations like that. We work more automatically. I reject the idea that everything must have a reason or a hidden explanation. You are completely free to interpret my films however you want – that’s your pleasure – but I can’t help you there. I don’t work with symbols. Or if I do, I try not to be aware of them. I used Vertigo because I used it. That’s it. Of course, the music contains danger, unease, tension – and I wanted that atmosphere. The same with Psycho. But I don’t go further than that. I completely understand – and I agree with your rejection. My mind naturally tries to interpret, to understand the artist’s gesture. But in Mondongo, all those debates about materials – the long discussions with the researcher about what exactly the artists use – feel like a MacGuffin. Thus, my question is: Are the materials themselves actually important, or is it the outcome that matters – the image that captures our attention, that provokes feeling and interpretation? To me, those debates seem like an excuse to talk about something else. And in that sense, Hitchcock’s music helps underline that MacGuffin structure. In Mondongo: El Equilibrista, there’s even a line about the “over-complex relationship between artists, materials, and artwork.” I feel this idea runs through your recent films. Mondongo: Kunst der Farbe Yes – perhaps. You may be right. And you are free to follow that line of interpretation as far as you want. Mariano, do you think over time you’ve become more like Alejo in your filmmaking, that you had brought your personal life into the films? And Laura, on the other hand, has become more like the old you. I’m not just speculating – I can give you evidence from her last film… [He bursts into laughter.] You don’t need to explain that. I don’t need you to explain that. But Laura also took personal ideas and turned them into cinema. And on the other hand, Trenque Lauquen – even though you were one of the creative forces – feels like Extraordinary Stories, but through a different lens. I told Raphael: if you compare Ostende to Trenque Lauquen, there’s a huge difference in form and method. I even told Agustín that his first film was more like Laura’s Ostende or Alejo’s early films – small and contained, almost like your early pictures – but Trenque Lauquen became epic. Do you think you’re all becoming a bit like each other? I would say yes. But who is Alejo turning into? I don’t know! Agustín told me Alejo made his latest film entirely from a script – for the first time after so many years. So maybe he’s becoming something else, a mutant taking the next step. I believe all of you are on to the next step. That is your problem. You are very well-read, very witty and sharp – you have fewer of these issues than most people in the world – but you still have this problem: you are always two or three pictures behind. You are always three films late. Yes, definitely. Yeah. All the time – because you haven’t seen the new work, and we are always a couple of pictures ahead. I’m thinking about what I’m doing now, but the films I truly care about are two films ahead of the present. Right now, I have to finish Borges, which I think will be very important for me. Then I have to shoot Corsini Part 3. And then comes my big one. That one is a completely new landscape, a completely new thing. About Alejo – it’s the same. I don’t know which Alejo you are talking about when you talk about “Alejo” – the one who made The Middle Ages? You haven’t seen the new one [Pin de fartie]? No, I haven’t. And you haven’t read the thing we wrote together, because nobody has seen it. That’s why it’s difficult to speak about ourselves: we know things you don’t know. You see us through films that, for us, are already distant. Yes, I understand. They are working right now, and I watch what they’re doing right now – and it’s different. We’re moving. When people say, “We want to make a retrospective,” I always say no. Laura might say yes because they pay well, but when they say, “We want to show all your films,” I tell them, “It’s not finished yet. It’s not the time.” We are still in the making. We can’t be stopped for a retrospective – we’re still on the move. For example: who knows us? Not many. Are we going to remain in this sideways corner of cinema, or not? And if we do, what is the price we will pay for staying outside? If we go further into the centre of contemporary cinema – which nobody knows exactly what it is – what price will we pay for being inside? We don’t know. We can deal with the present, or we try to. But I hope we still have a future. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear. I totally understand. I regret that I’m not Argentine, not inside the group – because then I might understand better. I know it myself: I’m outside. I’m Iranian, living in the UK, outside of you… Oh, but everybody is outside. It’s not about Argentina. You know more about us than Rafael does. I don’t know if Rafael [Rafael Spregelburd] has even seen all our pictures. That’s interesting. I was surprised he hadn’t seen some of the recent ones. I’m actually happy I saw them earlier than him! No, he hasn’t. But that’s interesting. For example, Pilar Gamboa – the actress – she appears in a couple of recent pictures, including Mondongo: Kunst der Farbe, and she hasn’t seen them, even though she’s in them. We don’t have time. That is the point. She’s in a play that I haven’t seen. It’s like that. We don’t have time; we’re busy. We’re busy raising children – as you are, perhaps – and earning our living and making pictures. These are three very difficult tasks. We don’t have time to go see the play, or to watch the films. We are busy. When you ask me for this kind of exchange and I don’t answer, or I say I can’t – it’s not that I’m avoiding you. It’s that I’m extremely busy, but in a way that I don’t think people can fathom, how full of things the lives of people like us are. It’s not that I’m bragging – it’s the awful truth. Painful and real. Director Mariano Llinás Mariano, I believe your less epic films – if I can call them that – still come from the same impulse that produced La Flor. I think you still want to make something like La Flor, but instead of one 13-hour film, all these Corsini and Mondongo films contain branches of that idea. You’re simply spreading ideas across different films. For example, Corsini interpreta a Blomberg & Maciel begins with your friend, the singer, reading a book; then you move into casting; then you start making fun of yourself and of music – it contains everything. And then in Popular tradición de esta tierra, you go into politics. It’s very funny that, in an indirect way, you put Gabriel in a position where he insults the president he actually supports, on your behalf – as a critique of the situation – but not spoken from your own mouth. I didn’t put him there. He was there, and he started doing that. I don’t know – it wasn’t my fault… I know you didn’t. He said, “I’m not insulting him,” and then immediately did. It was hilarious. What I’m saying is that these smaller, less epic films of yours show us more directly what El Pampero is doing. In Popular tradición de esta tierra, the entire process – pre-production, filming, post-production – is embedded by telling the story of Corsini. You see how the music is recorded, how you edit, how you exchange ideas. Internationally, people encounter El Pampero generally through the big films – Trenque Lauquen, Extraordinary Stories, La Flor – and some of Alejo’s epic ones like The Gold Bug. But with these smaller productions, which deal with more local and intimate concerns, do you avoid sending these films internationally because someone in Argentina might understand them more easily than someone abroad? You want me to tell you the truth? Yes. I believe that in the future, they’re going to like those small films more. I think nobody is going to watch La Flor, but they’re going to care about these smaller pictures. They will rise someday. Perhaps we’ll still be here to see it; perhaps not. But yes – I think they will care about these films when we are gone, or when we are old. Who knows? But they are not for the festival circuit, because they are too… too niche. Cinema today is traveling for survival. And the people who are fighting for the survival of cinema need big movements, monumental works. They need things that will surprise people who are not that interested in cinema. They use these big films to argue against the non-narrative, slow, contemplative cinema that used to be prestigious. They use us to fight against that. So, they need narration and storytelling. It’s part of a current agenda. These small pictures don’t serve that purpose. You can’t use something like Popular tradición de esta tierra for the politics of cinema, or for the cinema wars. People who are busy protecting cinema don’t have time to watch something like that. But when they do have time, they will care about them, I think. They will find them more pleasant than the big epic ones. It’s like going to a big city. Of course, when you go to London for the first time, you visit Westminster, Big Ben, the Thames, the bridges. But when you go the third time, you don’t say those places are bad – you just prefer the smaller ones, the ones that become yours. People’s work is like that. They will find the particular small details in the smaller films. I am very glad I have been able to make small objects too. I didn’t mention this earlier, but it was something I truly wanted. I didn’t want to be a slave to a monumental work. It’s much more difficult – extremely difficult – to make a small, precise film, because you don’t have the prestige of money or manpower or momentum. It’s extremely difficult to be accurate in a small picture. For me, it is much easier to make a huge thing. You’ve also been appearing in podcasts, interviews, lectures – even speaking at your country’s parliament regarding INCAA. For those of us outside Argentina, what is your main concern right now? Why is it important for you to engage in these conversations? And more broadly, what does the current film culture in Argentina look like? The situation here is extremely difficult. The current government has declared a kind of war on cinema – on its own national cinema. They are trying to turn people against their own filmmakers, and unfortunately, they are succeeding. Cinema has always been easy to attack – it’s seen as an expensive luxury, something people discuss from swimming pools. So, it’s very easy to mobilise resentment against it in order to hide other problems. I have never benefited from state policies – not me, not El Pampero. We’ve always been critical. But when criticism comes from the wrong side – from people who stand for the opposite of everything you stand for – you have to speak out. I stand against this government more strongly than I ever stood against previous film policies. With others, we could argue, dispute – that’s normal. Here, there is no common ground. I stand for the opposite of everything they stand for. That’s why I can’t remain silent. Especially because it’s hard to accuse me of being part of the system – I’ve always been outside it. So, I won’t be shy about my position against these sons of bitches. I feel I need to complete this point. I believe you are a kind of character. When you believe in something, you act on it – you create it. If you want something to exist in a film, it exists. Take Clorindo Testa: if you believe that evil needs to appear in the film, even briefly, it does – regardless of objections. Even if Agustín or anyone else were to advise against it, you would still include it, and we see it. Or take the moment, in Popular tradición de esta tierra, when you wanted to insult Javier Milei. Gabriel said, “I won’t say it, I won’t insult him,” yet you found a way for it to be expressed indirectly, through him. Or in Mondongo: even when the cooperation collapses, even when the project threatens to fall apart, you still stage the duel. So, I believe that when you truly want something, you make it happen – no matter the resistance. There’s a proverb in Farsi: Even if stones start raining from the sky instead of water, you still will act. You are a stubborn man. It’s not me, Hamed. It’s fiction. It’s not me who does these things. It’s fiction. And within fiction, anything that fiction allows is possible. If fiction wants a duel, the duel happens. If fiction wants you to go to the moon and find selenites that turn into dust when struck with a stick, you can do that. If fiction wants a giant monkey to climb the Empire State Building, it will happen. And if fiction wants a car in Koker to climb a slope, it will climb the slope. It’s not me. It’s fiction. Both Clorindo Testa and Mondongo: El Equilibrista end with your child, placed within a landscape – sometimes with a dog, sometimes with Agustín and his family (Constanza Feldman). Are these endings connected? And there’s that moment I love, when Agustín repeatedly and jokingly says, “You represent Argentina well.” It comes after a kind of battle – not a victorious one, but something unresolved. These frames, these repetitions, feel carefully chosen. I try to connect all these films through their images, their framing, their editing, their themes. Hamed – once again, this is your fanaticism for interpretation. The reason for those two endings is very simple: it’s the same road trip. Every June, we travel to San Juan. We usually go by car, with my son, Agustín, and his daughter; sometimes Agustín’s wife joins us. That year, we went to La Pampa and shot the ending of Clorindo Testa. On the way back from San Juan – which, by the way, looks incredibly Persian, you would love it – we stopped and filmed that “Argentina great” scene. It meant nothing. We just wanted the dog to bark. Later, I realised that if Mondongo could exist, I could give myself the freedom to include that scene – something that had nothing to do with anything. But of course, if you believe it connects to everything else, you are absolutely free to let your interpretive wings fly. In several of your recent films – particularly those connected to the works of Clorindo Testa and Mondongo – there seems to be a strong formal connection beyond landscape, animals, or setting. Both films conclude with a written text that functions almost like a poem or a poetic reflection. I am not suggesting a thematic insistence or a rigid interpretive framework, but rather a formal resemblance: a shared gesture of ending the film through writing, through language. These endings do not simply extend the films’ melancholic tone; they transform it into something reflective and lyrical. As someone coming from a culture deeply rooted in poetry – Persian poetry in particular – I am very aware of how difficult it is to fully transmit the emotional and rhythmic depth of a poem once it is translated. Figures such as Hafez, Saadi, Rumi, Khayyam, or Ferdowsi lose something essential in translation: tone, cadence, and the internal music of the language. In cinema, this difficulty seems even greater. Ending a film with a poem places the audience in a delicate position, especially when they have followed the film for hours and expect a certain form of narrative or conceptual closure. Could you speak about your relationship to these poems, and about the risk and intention behind using them as a concluding gesture in your films? Well, the poems are extremely connected to my father. He used to write poems – as you know, he was a poet – and he wrote exactly that kind of poetry. I wouldn’t say that I imitate him, because I was simply very close to him when he was writing. I learned how those poems were made by being present, by proximity. This can sound a bit controversial, because people often say that you cannot really learn how to write poetry as a technique. But in a way, you can. You see it happening. My father wrote a certain kind of poem that he more or less invented, and I feel that I can continue writing in that same manner. It’s something that passes from father to son. I am not a poet in the strict sense, but sometimes I write poems the way my father would have written them. I feel I can do that – not by copying him, but by continuing something that belongs to him and now also belongs to me. I’d like to return to Borges and the film you’re working on. Why Borges? What stage is the project at now? And how does it relate to where you are in your life? Initially, I was hired to do it – though I was hired to do whatever I wanted as you know I have always act so. The person who commissioned it had acquired a large collection of Borges manuscripts, letters, and first editions and wanted a film about that collection. As I worked, I realised I could make a biography of Borges – without actors, not a staged biography, but a cinematic one. I began travelling to places that mattered in his life and investigating the objects in the collection. At my age, making a biography is a challenge – because you begin confronting your own biography. When you reach 50, you earn the right to think of your life as a story. I believe all the films I made after La Flor are converging toward this Borges film. If Mondongo was a portrait, this is a biography. Clorindo Testa was not a biography of my father – but this one is a biography, and I’m deeply committed to that structure. Borges is probably the most influential figure in my life. Even if no one had asked you to make a film about Borges, I feel you would have done it eventually – just as with your father in Clorindo Testa. At first, you resisted making a film about him, but inevitably it became a film about your father, your family, yourself, and even El Pampero. Not necessarily. There are many things in my life that have been extremely influential, and yet I don’t feel compelled to write about them or make films about them. I don’t think in that way. Take Hergé, for example – he has been enormously influential for me. But that doesn’t mean I feel I must make a film about him. Perhaps one day I will, but it’s different. I find it easier to engage with things that are not already so well known. So if no one had asked me to make a film about Borges, I probably would never have undertaken it on my own. In a sense, everything I’ve done already has something to do with Borges. I don’t need to write about him or film him in order to work through his influence. There’s an expression – often attributed to Doctor Johnson – “dealer in the obvious.” That, for me, is the real danger of making a film about Borges: dealing in the obvious. I think I’ve managed to avoid that danger so far. But I don’t believe that the influence something has on my work automatically translates into an intention to make a film about it. For instance, why have I never made a film about the history of surrealism? It has been hugely important to me. It might even make a very good and necessary film – but I’ve never felt drawn to do it. Perhaps as I grow older, those major influences in my life will start to appear more directly as subjects in my work. But that hasn’t been my way of working. At least, not until now. I recently started rereading The Labyrinth of Borges. I discovered he worked as a kind of librarian, and I believe you see something of yourself in Borges: this man who travelled the whole world through books, collecting stories from everywhere – from Iranian poets like Khayyam to the Great Wall of China. Borges never actually travelled to all these places; he just hoped he would. [At this point Mariano lifts a book and shows it to me.] Do you know who this is? Of course – that’s Shah Abbas the Great, one of the major kings of the Safavi dynasty. Yes. Shah Abbas. The Golden Age of Islam, the decay of the caliphate, the revival of Persian independence. The coming of the… how do you say it? [Struggles with pronunciation] Sel–juq. Persian literature. What? Oh! Seljuq – yes, that’s another dynasty. Seljuq! You see, I have much to learn from you! The Mongol cataclysm, the expansion of Hulagu Khan’s caliphate – many things. Yes, lots of fun. This is exactly what I’m saying – this moment proves my point. Borges didn’t leave Argentina. He didn’t travel to China, but he travelled through books. And you are similar: you travel the world through another medium – cinema. So Borges holds something personal for you, because he represents that mixture of literature, exploration, mystery… Oh, he didn’t travel. He wouldn’t leave the country until he was 50-something. And when he finally started travelling, he was blind – he travelled by reading. That was his only way. Well, yes, he lived abroad in Switzerland as a child, and later, as an author, he worked almost his entire life in a very small library. So, he would travel “bounded in a nutshell.” … Listen, I would be very interested in knowing your country, but it’s not an easy time, is it? No, not at all. And you know what’s happening from the media. It’s not just my country – the whole region is on fire. I’m very worried. I feel Iran is becoming like the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War – the West deciding to break it into pieces. And honestly, I believe Israel is still the continuation of the Crusades – a long, unresolved war between West and East. I’m not only worried about Iran. I’m worried about Iraq, Syria, and above all, Palestine. I laugh while speaking, but after I finish this interview I sit with my anxiety. What’s happening in Gaza, in the region, is dreadful. Politicians could intervene – they could stop this – but they don’t. They benefit. They remain silent while this chain of misery continues. It’s a bleak moment in human history. I don’t think much has changed between the early 20th century and the early 21st. I understand. I’m very sorry to hear that – truly sorry. Well… I’ll have to content myself with knowing your country through books. Through Borges. Through whatever means I can. We’ll see. We’ll see. My friend… what are we going to do? I know this won’t be enough for you, but for me, I’ve experienced many things during this interview. It has been extremely touching and extremely moving. So I thank you for that. I thank you for that, Mariano. I mean it. And I have so many notes now – so many details to think about. Yes, but still – even if you write everything down – I think it’s good that we spoke like this. Because… I’ve been extremely honest with you. I don’t want to start giving you pre-packaged answers just to get rid of your questions. They are good questions, and I appreciate your interest. So I think for today, we are done. Author’s postscript: A few months after the main body of this interview was completed, the interviewer’s emotional and psychological state altered the meaning of Melancholia of the Fatherland, transforming it into Horror of the Fatherland – or of the world – a descent into terror and absolute despair toward land, world, and existence. At Christmas, I was forced to travel urgently to Iran to see my father and say farewell as he was in the terminal stage of cancer. During this period, while completing this conversation on the one hand and caring for my father and supporting my family on the other, I also witnessed demonstrations across Iran – protests against deep financial, political, economic, and cultural hardships. Throughout this period, I was in constant contact with Mariano Llinás. Our conversations went far beyond the interview itself. We spoke about my father’s condition, about Iran, and even about the death of Bahram Beyzaie, the great Iranian filmmaker and playwright. He listened like a brother – patiently and attentively – and shared his thoughts on fatherhood, loss, and the political situation. On Christmas Eve, he tried to comfort me, speaking about how one might cope with a father’s illness, or with the act of saying goodbye. He told me: “Sorry to hear that. I hope your father has lived an intense life and is old enough to say goodbye. Saying goodbye to a father happens only once in a lifetime. Everything will change for you. I hope you live this experience with the intensity it deserves. I can’t say I’m sorry – because I believe that letting go of a father is something every man must face in his life. You are grown up, and you had the privilege of saying goodbye to an old one. So, my compliments.” He spoke to calm me, to be emotionally present, and to show deep concern for both me and my country. At times, we even drifted into hopeful daydreams – imagining traveling through Iran together, from the forests of the north to the deserts of the south, visiting the monuments of Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz, crossing landscapes of extraordinary beauty and historical depth. In early January, I had to leave Iran. A few days later, the last image I saw of my father – through a video call – became, both metaphorically and literally, an image of my country. My father was struggling for life, taking his final breaths, just as people were in the streets struggling and protesting for the bare minimum: for dignity, for survival, for the possibility of a decent life. Then the internet was cut off. After a day of silence, I learned that my father had passed away. Soon after, news arrived that many people in Iran had also been killed. Reports of foreign interference and another deadly attack by the country’s enemies spread rapidly, intensifying the psychological atmosphere of fear – fear of the present and of a dark, uncertain future. This climate deepened my sense of horror. I was seized by it. Iran – its trapped and defenseless people caught between sanctions, an oppressive state, harsh and brutal foreign enemies, and the personal loss of my father – became a place where living, and even imagining a future, felt almost impossible. Throughout all of this, I continued exchanging messages with Mariano. He listened with genuine concern – concern for the situation, concern for Iran, and concern for me. He tried to preserve some sense of hope, however fragile. This care has given an entirely new dimension to this conversation in my mind. During this time, our conversations were not limited to Iran. We also spoke about a few political and social incidents in Argentina. He worried not only about his own country, but also about mine – an Iran that had come to matter deeply to him; an Iran with an uncertain future, seemingly filled with immense suffering and no clear or visible solution. To have a friend – almost a brother – who truly understands you and tries to calm you in such moments is rare. This kind of bond, formed between interviewer and interviewee, is unusual. We began by talking about cinema, but we ended up speaking about something far more important: human suffering, national trauma, and the shared weight of history. This is something that should be profoundly appreciated.
