The Delinquents (International, Latin America)
Director: Rodrigo Moreno
Producer: Ezequiel Borovinsky
Screenwriter: Rodrigo Moreno
Cinematographer: Alejo Maglio, Inés Duacastella
In this gently surreal, formally bold Argentinian take on the heist film, two bumbling bandits try to buy their liberty.
For a bank robber, Morán has modest ambitions. After running the numbers, the middle-aged teller decides he’d rather raid his workplace’s vault for his remaining wages – and do the requisite time – than waste his life behind a desk, so he subsequently recruits his colleague Román to bury the loot in the Córdoba countryside. Money equals emancipation, but when these unlikely outlaws are loosed from the capitalist grind, they must learn how to spend their freedom.
The fifth fiction feature from New Argentine Cinema director Rodrigo Moreno, The Delinquents is his first film to screen at Cannes, premiering in Un Certain Regard to widespread acclaim. Much like in the work of his compatriots Lucrecia Martel (The Holy Girl, MIFF 2004) and Martín Rejtman (Two Shots Fired, MIFF 2015), Argentina’s financial turmoil thrums in the background of this existential crime caper carried out by uncanny doubles whose fates diverge and wildly unravel. As this mischievous film trails these clumsy yet charming crims’ meandering escapades, it exposes how economic precarity short-changes the imagination.
“A dark Dostoyevskyian tale of crushing guilt and moral turpitude transforms into something hopeful and strangely ebullient … Hilarious funny.” – Little White Lies