Phoenix 24
A fractured friendship reveals the shadows of national memory.
Toronto, Canada.
Argentine filmmaker Benjamín Naishtat has presented Glaxo at the Toronto International Film Festival, bringing Hernán Ronsino’s acclaimed novel to the screen through a story connecting friendship, desire and betrayal with Argentina’s history of political violence. The film had its world premiere on September 11 and was subsequently discussed by its director in an interview published on September 19. Moving across different periods and perspectives, the narrative follows a group of friends whose relationships become entangled with the political tensions surrounding their small hometown in Buenos Aires Province. The production continues Naishtat’s exploration of how historical events penetrate private lives.
The filmmaker was initially attracted to Ronsino’s austere literary style and unconventional narrative structure. Rather than presenting events chronologically, the novel reconstructs a shared past through different voices, allowing contradictions and omissions to emerge gradually. Naishtat recognized in this approach an opportunity to revisit questions that have interested him since encountering Rodolfo Walsh’s Operation Massacre. The influential work investigated the clandestine executions carried out in José León Suárez in 1956 following a failed uprising against Argentina’s military government.
For Naishtat, those executions provide an important historical reference for understanding subsequent political violence. During his Toronto interview, he argued that the concealment, deception and absence of legal accountability surrounding the events anticipated practices associated with Argentina’s later dictatorship. He also identified the 1955 bombing of Plaza de Mayo as an episode that deserves greater attention within the country’s collective memory. His interpretation suggests that the historical trauma of the 1970s has partly overshadowed earlier events that illuminate the development of political repression.
The connection with Walsh introduces another dimension. The journalist investigated the 1956 executions and was later abducted and disappeared in 1977 during Argentina’s military dictatorship. Naishtat considers this trajectory particularly significant because the person who documented one episode of state violence eventually became a victim of another. The filmmaker uses that historical relationship to explore the persistence of violence and its consequences across generations.
Yet Glaxo does not function exclusively as a historical reconstruction. Esteban Bigliardi portrays the adult Vardemann, known as Flaco, whose transformation reveals the distance between youthful optimism and the accumulated consequences of betrayal. Bigliardi interprets that deterioration as a possible metaphor for Argentina itself, connecting the frustration of personal aspirations with the country’s political history. His character becomes a vehicle for examining how collective violence can reshape individual relationships long after the original events have passed.
The ensemble includes Marcelo Subiotto, Esteban Lamothe, Alan Sabbagh and Lali Espósito, whose character draws inspiration from the cinematic tradition of the femme fatale. Following its Toronto premiere, the film is scheduled to compete for the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Its international presentation places an Argentine literary adaptation before audiences whose own historical experiences may offer different ways of interpreting the narrative.
Glaxo ultimately approaches national memory through an intimate question: what remains of friendship when fear, ambition and betrayal become inseparable from political circumstances? Naishtat’s film examines the consequences of decisions that continue shaping lives long after their immediate causes have disappeared.
La narrativa también es poder. / Narrative is power too.