Hazme reír
2011 · 24m · Argentina
Directed by Julio Lascano
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Street artists Nacho, Josefina and Santi, clowns, acrobats and jugglers, sustain a fragile bossless craft that becomes deeply rewarding when they awaken wonder and laughter, performing at a festival founded in memory of Nacho's dead brother.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a doc about street performers to genuflect at the altar of human resilience—*Hazme reír* refuses, instead letting the bossless chaos and genuine weirdness of clown culture just exist without redemption narrative coating, which is genuinely refreshing until it isn't.
Lascano's essay-documentary sits thoughtfully in the lineage of performative portraiture, using the memorial festival as both structural spine and philosophical anchor—the formal restraint in letting the performers breathe rather than perform for the camera is what separates this from sentimentality.
The decision to let the camera linger on *preparation*—the unperformed moments between acts—transforms this from a celebration doc into something about the internal discipline that makes wonder possible, and that single tonal choice does all the heavy lifting on a modest scope.