Black Box

Colour, 35mm
Argentina, 2002, 81 min
Section: Forum of Independents

Synopsis

17-year-old Dorotea lives with her 100-year-old grandmother. Every morning she combs her gran’s hair, massages her wrinkled, dry skin, and gets her ready for the day. Then she cycles to work. Eduardo, her father, is released from prison. Like an aimless ghost, he walks through the streets of Buenos Aires and ends up in the Salvation Army men’s hostel. Dorotea tries to see him, but Eduardo shies away from all contact with her. They meet a number of times on a park bench in a children’s playground, but they don’t speak to each other. Only gradually does the invisible barrier between father and daughter start to disappear. Finally Dorotea manages to bring her father home for dinner... What happened in the past is no longer important: we just leave it all stored in the “black box” of our imagination.
 

About the director

Luis Ortega (1980, Buenos Aires) moved with his family to the US at the age of three, where he lived for ten years before returning to Argentina. He studied scriptwriting and philosophy. Black Box (Caja negra) is his first feature film.