Following its presentation in Competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, Ritorno a Buenos Aires, the new film by Marco Bechis, has been released in Italian cinemas, distributed by Fandango. The cinematography is by Fabrizio La Palombara, a cinematographer and associate member of Collettivo Chiaroscuro. Through restrained direction, attentive to silences, faces and the passage of time, Bechis once again explores the wounds left by Argentina’s dictatorship and the possibility of transforming memory into testimony.
Set in 2008, the film follows Mariano Guerra, played by Adriano Giannini, as he returns to Argentina after thirty-three years in Italy. Mariano is due to testify at the trial of the former military officers who abducted, tortured and enslaved him during the dictatorship. His encounters with other survivors, and his return to the places and people of his past, bring events that had remained unresolved for decades back to the surface, forcing him to confront the burden of memory and the guilt of having survived.
Presented in Competition at the Venice Lido on 11 September, Ritorno a Buenos Aires received the 2026 Francesco Pasinetti Award for Best Italian Film. Adriano Giannini was also awarded the Pasinetti Award for Best Actor.
The cast also includes Ana Celentano, Verónica Gerez, Olivia Nuss, Adrián Fondari, Paula Cohen and Marcelo Chaparro. The screenplay is by Marco Bechis and Vijaya Bechis Boll, with editing by Jacopo Quadri and Nicolò Tettamanti and music by Guglielmo Diana.
Ritorno a Buenos Aires has been in Italian cinemas since 17 September.
Fabrizio La Palombara told us:
“When I first read the screenplay for Ritorno a Buenos Airesthe first thing I felt I needed to do was create an image that would, above all, express the state of mind of Mariano, the protagonist. An image that was never self-indulgent, but always remained closely attuned to his emotional condition. The film tells the story of a man returning to a traumatic past that has never truly been resolved. Mariano returns to Buenos Aires to testify against the military officers who held him prisoner for more than two years, but the real journey takes place within him: a journey marked by a profound sense of guilt, by the anxiety and anguish of having been forced to collaborate with his captors in order to survive.
This led to the idea of dramatic cinematography, characterised by adesaturated palette and a restrained colour range, designed to convey this specific psychological state visually. The light had to be part of the storytelling, almost a physical manifestation of what Mariano carries within him. The film was shot between Porto Alegre and Turin, with two camera departments and two separate production design, costume and make-up teams. The section set in Turin, during the winter, is characterised by acooler colour temperature, more subdued lighting and a greater sense of stillness. I did not, however, want to create a clear separation between Italy and Argentina through colour: the difference had to remain subtle, precisely because Mariano’s past and present continue to overlap and merge. In some scenes, we sought an almost unsettling, intermittent light, capable of physically conveying the protagonist’s anxiety and unease. It was not simply a matter of lighting a space, but of making the space itself respond to his inner state, helping to create the sense of disquiet that accompanies the character.
The exteriors, by contrast, create a sense of openness, producing a feeling of freedom that is fragile and temporary. Mariano inevitably returns to his inner conflict, and the cinematography follows him back into a more enclosed and claustrophobic dimension. Particularly important was our exploration of how to represent the flashbacks. We did not want to resort to the usual change in colour to signal a shift to another time: we were looking for visual continuity between the two temporal dimensions, conveying the sense that Mariano was not simply remembering something, but was still, in some form, living through what had happened to him. The camera also plays a part in this process. The use of zooms in many scenes narrows the space around Mariano and heightens the sense of confinement and suffocation, progressively drawing the viewer into the protagonist’s state of mind ».
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Rental: Flo Cine Rental
Cinematographer and Camera Operator: Fabrizio La Palombara (Giovanni Gebbia for two days in Turin)
1st Assistant Camera: Pablo Rosa (Brazil), Stefano Barabino (Italy), Simonluca Chiotti
2nd Assistant Camera: Gerson Luis Padão Fagundes (Brazil), Alessandra Tocco (Italy)
DIT: Paolo Furlanelli
Video Assist: Fabiano Oliveira (Brazil), Alexa Garcia Vigo
Gaffer: Anderson Dias
Key Grip: Alcimar Bairros da Silva (Padre) (Brazil), Antonio Ascione
Camera: Sony VENICE 2
Aspect Ratio: 2:1
Lenses: Cooke Panchro Classic FF
Colourist: Walter Cavatoi
Laboratory: Mediafenix
