(2023, Argentina, USA, 95')
Great expectations in vibrant post-1980s Buenos Aires. Julio, doting husband and father of two, is back to his home country, which he left at the time of dictatorship. He was born in a wealthy industrialist family and is set to run his family enterprise with his brother, Miguel, but Miguel is kidnapped, and the family blackmailed. Julio takes upon himself the responsibility to rescue Miguel as he feels his family’s pressure on his shoulders. He will end up in a thick plot of shadowy situations. Despite Argentina’s newly found democracy, horrifying threats keep lurking in the dark.
Argentinian filmmaker Daniela Goggi directed Abzurda (2015), El hilo rojo (2016), and HBO Max series María Marta: el crimen del Conuntry (2022) on famed murder of sociologist María Marta García Belsunce in her Buenos Aires villa in 2002. The lone Argentinian entry at the VFF, El rapto is a free adaptation of Martin Sivak’s El salto de papa and a superb portrayal of lingering horror after the threat is apparently over, all the while telling the stories of the many families hit by violence and abuse of power during the regime and after the regime had been toppled.
