Chronicle of an Escape (2007)

Absolutely Brilliant!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A great movie. About the pain of truth and the fight against a regime. About the hope and the sin. About democracy and fear.All is perfect. Actors, lights, screenplay. Slice by slice, the movie becomes a testimony. Not about a piece of Argentina history but about a reality in which many of us, actors, victims, silhouettes, are crumbs. The story is basic. The scenes are stone rain. The end is not happy, not heroic. But saint full. A film about every regime for who democratic values are fiction. About the power and not authority. About lies and dark illusion. About limits and resistance. About Albania of Enver Hodja or Cambodgia of Pol Pot. Or, maybe, Belarus of Lukashenko. A lesson. About the force to be more than a mask, number or victim. And a homage to the people for who the moral victory is more important than all prizes. Must see! Foe understand.

In 1977, the goalkeeper of the Almagro team Claudio Tamburrini (Rodrigo de la Serna) is illegally kidnapped from his home, arrested by the government forces and sent blindfolded to Sere Mansion, a clandestine detention center. His acquaintance Tano (Martín Urruty), who had been tortured for a long period, had falsely accused Claudio of being a revolutionary. Along the months, Claudio is kept nude and handcuffed together with the prisoners El Gallego (Lautaro Delgado), El Vasco (Matías Marmorato) and Guillermo Fernández (Nazareno Casero) and submitted to all sort of humiliations and tortures, until the night they decide to escape from their imprisonment in the old mansion.The dramatic "Crónica de una Fuga" is a true recollection of a dark period of dictatorship in South America sponsored by USA to fight the communism, more specifically in Argentina. The story is very well acted but limited to the situation of Claudio and the other three prisoners in the Sere Mansion and their escape. However it omits, for example, that Tano and the other prisoners have been certainly dropped airborne from an Air Force airplane (the Jeep indicates Air Force Argentine, and this was a common practice in the dictatorship period). My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Crônica de uma Fuga" ("Chronicle of an Escape")

Buenos Aires 1977 tells the true story of four men who narrowly escaped death at the hands of a military death squad during the Argentinean dirty war in the late 1970s.The Dirty War is the name given to the state-sponsored violence against citizens mostly carried out between 1976 and 1983 by Jorge Rafael Videla's military government in Argentina during what was called by the dictatorship the "National Reorganization Process" or what the modern world calls "genocide".The film follows Claudio Tamburrini, a goal keeper for a minor league football team, who was forcefully kidnapped by members of the Argentine secret military police.He is taken to a detention center known as Sere Mansion which is an old dilapidated house in a suburban neighbourhood on the suspicion he's an anti-government terrorist.Tamburrini is not alone and his fellow abductees are frequently tortured by the jailers for information he doesn't have because he was never a political activist.After four months of imprisonment, and many sessions of torture, Tamburrini and his fellow captives make a break for freedom.It is a gripping film throughout with bleak filming adding depth to the situation making it a taut psychological thriller especially because you are aware that this actually happened. The camera work and acting immerse the viewer into the mundane but arduous life that these innocent prisoners lead right through to the climatic finale.According to the Nunca Más report issued by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in 1984, about 9,000 people were "disappeared" between 1976 and 1983. Estimates by human rights organisations place the number at closer to 30,000.Buenos Aires 1977 is a deeply moving and involving film worth a trip to the cinema for an education on both how to shoot this kind of film and a brief education about the not-so-distant Dirty War of Argentina.

Yes, this time we can be sure. This movie will bring home the first award since "la historia Oficial". But the great thing about this movie is that it does not need any award to prove how great it is. When you have some great performances, specially from the best south-American actor of his generation, Rodrigo de la Serna (Diarios de Motocicleta), and a director who has achieved his most mature work, and all of this to tell a story so sad, deep, breathtaking and energetic, you can't go wrong. I was lucky enough as to see this film on a preview, so this is the first vote it receives at the IMDb. But believe me, this movie has future of top 250. Not that it needs it, anyway. Finally, if you are from Argentina, and you think that we have had enough with this type of stories, think of all the missing tales similar to this one, that we'll never know of. They are at least 30.000. So we need to continue filming and writing about the seventies, until one day we'll be able to say. "This won't happen again"