ARA
2018 · 12m · Argentina
Directed by Gustavo Fogel
Genres: documentary, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
On 15 November 2017, all contact ceased with a submarine carrying 44 crew members in Atlantic waters. Family and loved ones wait for news under total uncertainty, in a memorial against forgetting.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a submarine disaster to be about heroics or technical failure—Fogel just films people sitting in rooms, waiting, remembering. It's almost boring until you realize that's the entire point, which is either genius or he got lucky.
A formally restrained memorial that resists narrative climax in favor of accumulated presence; the editing syntax here—long holds, careful juxtaposition of faces and archival footage—situates itself in a lineage of dignified observational cinema, the kind that lets absence speak.
The decision to shoot in near-silence, letting ambient room tone and breath become the soundtrack, transforms what could've been maudlin documentary into something genuinely haunting—one sound design choice that reframes the entire emotional register.