City of Fear: Reimagining Buenos Aires in Contemporary Argentine Cinema

Argentine cinema has experienced a rebirth since the late 1990s, despite the country’s economic crisis. Buenos Aires, long a key setting for the nation’s films, has not escaped the negative impact of the crisis, yet filmmaking in the capital has thrived. This article explores the radically different presentation of the city since the first explosion of film in Argentina after the end of the military dictatorship of 1976–1983. It takes Luis Puenzo’s controversial La historia oficial as a starting point for a reflection on the current presentation of Buenos Aires as a city plagued by fear in productions from the late 1990s to the early twenty‐first century.