TEATRO DE GUERRA

Theater
Directed by: Lola Arias

Soundtrack

In 1982, Argentina and UK fought the Malvinas Falklands War. The war ended with the British military victory and took about 1.000 lives, both British and Argentinean. While the conflict took place years ago, the sovereignty of the islands is still in dispute.

Theatre of War tells the story of how six veterans from the Malvinas/ Falklands War came together to make a film. Almost thirty-five years after the conflict, three British and three Argentine veterans spent months together discussing their war memories and then rehearsing their re-enactment.

This film is a way of showing the whole social experiment of making an artistic project with one-time enemies of war: the auditions to find the protagonists, the first meetings and discussions with them, the theatrical re-enactments of their memories in different scenarios: a swimming pool, a construction site, a military regiment. All the scenes in the film are at the same time authentic and artificial. Sometimes it looks like it’s happening for the first time, sometimes it’s a highly rehearsed situation.

The film playfully switches between reality and fiction, spontaneity and acting. It explores how to transform a soldier into an actor, how to turn war experiences into a story, how to show the collateral effects of war. The movie brings together former enemies to perform their wartime and post-war nightmares.