A winner of the Alfred Bauer Award at the 2001 Berlinale, La ciénaga, Lucrecia Martel’s celebrated ópera prima, revolves around the declining fortunes of a well-to-do family while they gather on their neglected plantation during a steamy summer. Here Mecha, the matriarch (veteran star Graciela Borges), presides over her four children and a good-for-nothing husband, who pass their time drinking cheap red wine around a putrid swimming pool. An accident leads to Mecha’s encounter with her cousin Tali, who also has four children and lives in a nearby city, and their families and fates begin to interlock. The titular bog signals entrapment and paralysis, yet underneath the stagnant surface one senses the undercurrents of “deviant” sexual desires. The depiction of a crumbling family of elevated status has a strong tradition in Argentine cinema—think of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson or María Luisa Bemberg—but Martel’s emphasis on the fraught relation between the white patrona (mistress) and the indigenous empleada (maid) introduces a new dimension. Add to that a sprinkling of the supernatural tales of Horacio Quiroga, and you have a perfect stew of dread, brimming with ominous forebodings, as the film slowly trickles towards its tragic climax.