Garage Olimpo

''Olympic Garage'' ( es, Garage Olimpo) is a 1999 Argentine drama film, directed by Marco Bechis.

The film was produced by Marco Bechis, Enrique Piñeyro (from Argentina), Amedeo Pagani (Italy), and Eric Heumann (France). Executive producers Daniel Burman and Diego Dubcovsky.

The picture is about a young politically active Argentine woman who is kidnapped by the military during Argentina's Dirty War in the late 1970s. She is taken to a torture center called ''Garage Olimpo'' in the middle of Buenos Aires.

Plot

The film tells of Maria ( Antonella Costa), an activist fighting the Argentinian military dictatorship during the Dirty War.

She teaches reading and writing in a poor suburb of Buenos Aires and lives with her mother Diane (Dominique Sanda), who rents out rooms. One of the lodgers is a young man named Felix ( Carlos Echevarría), who is in love with Maria, and rather shy. Felix seems to have come from nowhere and is supposed to work as a watchman in a garage.

One morning, Maria is kidnapped by a military squad in civilian clothes in front of her mother and is taken to the garage ''Olimpo,'' one of the many well-known torture places in the middle of Buenos Aires, which operate with the general indifference of the locals.

As soon as Maria is captured the film's mood becomes uncomfortable and the atmosphere is minimalist. The head of the center, Tigre ( Enrique Piñeyro), asks Felix, their best torturer, to make Maria talk. Yet, Felix is overcome by his feelings for Maria, and Maria is determined to exploit this for her survival.

Cast

* Antonella Costa as Maria
* Carlos Echevarría as Felix
* Enrique Piñeyro as Tigre
* Pablo Razuk as Tex
* Chiara Caselli as Ana
* Dominique Sanda as Diane
* Paola Bechis as Gloria
* Adrián Fondari as Rubio
* Marcelo Chaparro as Turco
* Miguel Oliveira as Nene
* Ruy Krieger as Francisco
* Marcos Montes as Víbora
* Erica Rivas as Hija de Tigre

Production

The film is based on the real political events that took place in Argentina after Jorge Rafael Videla's reactionary military ''junta'' assumed power on March 24, 1976. During the junta's rule: the parliament was suspended, unions, political parties and provincial governments were banned, and in what became known as the Dirty War between 9,000 and 30,000 people deemed left-wing "subversives" disappeared from society.

As the country celebrated its win of the World Cup, many political activists were tortured in Buenos Aires and then later taken on "death flights", where victims were drugged and then dropped alive into the Atlantic Ocean from military aircraft.

Chilean born director Marco Bechis was a victim of the country's military regime and was forced to leave Argentina in 1977, at the age of 20, for political reasons.

Distribution

The film was first presented at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival on May 16 in the Un Certain Regard section. It opened wide in Argentina on September 2, 1999.

The film was screened at various film festivals, including: the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada; the Huelva Latin American Film Festival, Spain; the Norwegian International Film Festival, Norway; the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, New York City; the Amnesty International Film Festival, Netherlands; and others.

Reception

Critical response

Stephen Holden, film critic for ''The New York Times'', wrote the film is "notable on the international front...a not-for-the-squeamish film from Argentina about an opponent of the military dictatorship who is tortured in a garage in the heart of Buenos Aires."

Critic Jonathan Hollander liked the directorial lead of Marco Bechis, and wrote, "''Garage Olimpo'' is the kind of valuable cultural product that symbolises political regeneration...himself a victim of the country's regime – he was forced to leave Argentina in 1977, at the age of 20, for political reasons – director Marco Bechis has the necessary moral authority to make this film."

Michael Thomson, writing for the ''BBC
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