Benjamin Naishtat’s Rojo And A Region’s Cinematic Reckoning

Reviewed by Alci Rengifo

The cinema of the Andes is a haunted art form. Rojo is set in the Argentina of the 1970s, plotted and shot like a classic noir, with a dark political subtext. Like many of the best recent films from this particular South American country and its neighbor Chile, the crime genre is used to tackle the legacy of the neo-fascist military regimes that governed these countries during the Cold War. This adds a layer of richness to the storytelling you don’t find in most U.S. movies or shows about detectives and…