In Latin America, cinema probes past dictatorships and sounds the alarm

The heroes of the new Argentinian series The Eternaut [available on Netflix in late April 2025] are residents of the Vicente López neighborhood of Buenos Aires. They are ordinary, middle-class citizens who were unprepared to face the toxic snow sent by alien invaders. They must therefore learn to organize, build trenches, and think together to form a united front.

This story is adapted from the eponymous comic book series , created in 1957 by Héctor Germán Oesterheld. Two years earlier, in Buenos Aires, Oesterheld had survived the bombing of the Plaza de Mayo by military planes [during an attempted coup d'état by soldiers opposed to the soon-to-be-deposed President Juan Perón], and then the execution of Peronists in a garbage dump [in 1956, under the presidency of General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, in the city of José León Suárez]. Héctor Germán Oesterheld and his four daughters would eventually be among the thousands of people who disappeared during the military dictatorship [1976-1983] .

The historical relevance of this comic strip [translated into French by Vertige Graphic] has made it a symbol, now re-released on Netflix almost seventy years later. And this is not an isolated case: films and series about dictatorships in the second half of the 20th century in South America are multiplying, especially since they are enjoying great success. Their directors speak of them as warnings of a burning topicality.

The most recent winner of the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, I Am Still Here [directed by Walter Salles and released in 2024] tells the story of a Rio de Janeiro woman's struggle to support herself and her four children after her husband, a political opponent, was kidnapped and murdered in 1971 during the dictatorship [which lasted in Brazil from 1964 to 1985]. Of the four South American films to have won this Oscar, three depict life under a military regime.

At the last Berlinale [Berlin International Film Festival], the Fipresci Prize was also awarded to Bajo las banderas, el sol [“Under the Flags, the Sun,” previously unreleased in France]. This Paraguayan documentary uses archive footage of Alfredo Stroessner, the country's de facto head of state for thirty-five years (1954-1989) and considered the first dictator of that era in the region.

Similarly, the only South American film in the official selection of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival is the Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent [directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho], which tells the story of a professor fleeing São Paulo in 1977 [also in the midst of a dictatorship], after being accused of allegedly engaging in subversive activities.

“If we do not promote historical memory, what happened to us will happen again: this is why, every March 24 [on the occasion of the National Day of Remembrance