Directors Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn believe that their film’s impact on Argentine audiences has far exceeded initial expectations. According to Europa Press, both filmmakers expressed that while they expected the work to spark debate, the scale and intensity of the discussion was unusual. The film “Homo Argentum” starring Guillermo Francella opens in Spanish cinemas this Thursday, December 25th, after gaining two million viewers in Argentina and being at the center of the cultural debate after its release last August. President Javier Milei welcomed the film in his
The medium Europa Press explained that “Homo Argentum” consists of 16 independent episodes, defined by the authors as “vignettes” that try to represent different aspects of Argentine society through the characters played by Francella. Topics discussed include the emigration of young people to Europe, social inequality, acts of false charity, citizen insecurity and tourism. The directors emphasize that the film’s approach is to explore recurring discourses in everyday Argentine life, mainly identified with the capital Buenos Aires. “We didn’t want to do a complete portrait, but rather our own view, a section,” Cohn explained to the media.
Duprat emphasized in an interview with Europa Press that the crisis in Argentina was nothing new for him, but that he observed a significant amount of hypocrisy in the art world. “Argentina has been in crisis since I was born and I am already an adult, I am 55 years old. For me this is nothing new, but I can say that there is a lot of hypocrisy on the part of the artists. A lot,” explained the filmmaker. For his part, Cohn added about the focus of the work: “The film moves on a ledge that we wanted to explore and work on, namely the theme of wrongness. In a time of too much solemnity, too much certainty and too much political correctness, the film becomes a small contribution, always with humor and a different look at recurring themes that go beyond Argentine and also apply in Spain or in the country of the world.”
The filmmakers said none of them foresaw the scale of the reaction in Argentina, with support and opposition from various sectors. “Everyone argued for or against,” they told Europa Press. Criticism came from film directors, religious institutions and politicians; At the same time, the film triggered strong defensive reactions among viewers. The authors were positive about the fact that the discussion went beyond the cinema and into the public debate, as they stated: “Beyond the debate, it is spectacular that a film leaves the cinema and is debated as a country.”
Javier Milei’s public defense further increased the media presence. According to Europa Press, Milei wrote a review in support of the film on her X-profile. The president called the film “cognitive dissonance in the woke heart” and said the characters allow us to visualize “many aspects of the dark and hypocritical agenda of the progressive caviar (woke).” In the same message, the Argentine president declared: “The greater the number of mental parasites in the progressive’s mind, the greater the hatred and plaintive cries of this army of zombies (thermosoctopus heads), whose most prominent aspects of their existence are being envious, resentful, lying, hypocritical and, above all, ignorant (at least in economics).”
Milei, quoted by Europa Press, also pointed out that the pain the film evokes in certain viewers is because “it presents them with a mirror in which everything they are comes to light.” He added that it was “almost unnecessary” to mention that they were uncomfortable with the success of a film made without government funding, which he said was a failure of some in the cultural industry. Asked about these comments, Cohn expressed that they tolerated the president’s opinion as part of the perspective of several viewers, claiming: “It’s good that everyone thinks what they want. It’s a film to express opinions. We don’t film certainties.”
At a conceptual level, Duprat and Cohn suggested that their ideological position is consistent with progressivism in terms of both lifestyle and aesthetic sensibilities. They claim that their proximity to the “woke” world allows them to argue the criticisms expressed in the film. In the words of the directors: “We criticize these ideas because we know them well, because it is the world we are in. If these ideas were not criticizable, it would be a prison.” They added that taking into account the political orientation of the works alone was limited and presented their personal example, as they had both developed films with government support and produced them independently.
Europa Press also addresses the debate sparked by one of the vignettes in which the main character is a film director. This episode raised questions from the film industry itself. Regarding the question of whether the character is a tribute to Pedro Almodóvar, the filmmakers explained that the inspiration is not exclusive, as several directors use their public interventions to spread messages that, in Duprat and Cohn’s opinion, do not correspond to real commitments. “There are many film directors who take advantage when they have to accept an award or go on stage to say stupid things that they know nothing about. They do it to look good, and they think well and defend noble causes that in reality don’t interest them in the least,” they argued during the interview.
Finally, the directors emphasized that they do not consider the existence of government funding to be crucial for the further development of their film projects, indicating that their careers included both large-scale productions and self-directed works. In this sense, the film represents a dialogue with earlier works in his filmography and moves away from the debate about the origin of the means. For her, the underlying discussion points to the function of art and its ability to challenge beyond political orientation and local situation.
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