MUBI debuted the official trailer for The Delinquents (Los delincuentes), the surreal offbeat heist comedy-drama film from Argentine writer-director Rodrigo Moreno, selected as Argentina’s official candidate for the Academy Awards® best international feature.
The film had its world premiere at the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival and its US premiere as part of the Main Slate of the 61st New York Film Festival last week. It opens on Wednesday, October 18 at Film at Lincoln Center and the Angelika Film Center in New York City, and on Friday, October 27 at the Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles, followed by other cities including Chicago and San Francisco.
Set amidst the dreary cubicles of a Buenos Aires bank, The Delinquents reinvents the heist film as a free-flowing adventure like no other. Bank employee Morán (Daniel Eliás) dreams up a scheme to liberate himself from corporate monotony: he’ll steal enough money to support a modest retirement, then confess and serve prison time while his co-worker holds on to the cash.
Soon under pressure by a company investigator, Morán’s accomplice Román (Esteban Bigliardi)––playfully, an anagram of Morán––heads to a remote rural idyll to hide the funds. There, he encounters a mysterious woman, Norma––anagram of Román––who changes his life forever. Repetitions and Russian dolls begin to pop up in the film’s second half, and as the increasingly offbeat and wondrous elements begin to unfold, Moreno’s beguiling zig-zag approach starts to shine.
Parasite meets Jacques Rivette meets Jorge Luis Borges in the latest hopscotching film from Argentine writer-director Moreno, whose The Delinquents melds the existential and the playful to explore the nature of freedom itself. Suffused with timeless beauty, this cinematic discovery is at turns surreal, relatable, funny, romantic, surprising, restorative—and above all—a delight.
Watch the official trailer for The Delinquents (Los delincuentes).
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