“Fusing elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s titular short story and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Alejo Moguillansky and Fia-Stina Sandlund’s meta-film follows an Argentine-Swedish co-production in Buenos Aires shooting a biopic of the 19th-century realist author and proto-feminist Victoria Benedictsson. After a hustling actor finds a treasure map detailing the location of ancient gold hidden near a town in the Misiones province named after the 19th-century politician Leandro N. Alem, he successfully persuades the producers to reframe the project as a portrait of the radical Alem (swapping feminist politics for anti-Eurocentric ones) and move the production there—so he can better search for the treasure. Fast-paced and hilariously self-reflexive, the film takes a playful approach to texts and history that is reminiscent of Borges.” —Film at Lincoln Center
THE GOLDEN BUG / EL ESCARABAJO DE ORO
A film by Alejo Moguillansky and Fia-Stina Sandlund
(Argentina/Denmark/Sweden, 2014, 102 min. In Spanish and Swedish with English and Spanish subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Watch the trailer:
