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They All Lie
(Todos mienten)

Director in Person
Directed by Matías Piñeiro.
With Romina Paula, María Villar, Julia Martínez Rubio.
Argentina, 2009, digital video, color, 75 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.

A more abstract counterpart of The Stolen Man, Piñeiro’s second feature unleashes eight strong-willed characters into a clandestine plot involving art forgery, an unfinished novel and Sarmiento’s US journals, resulting in a giddy kaleidoscope of differed meaning that playfully channels the high postmodernism of William Gaddis. Piñeiro explores a cool stylistic restraint in They All Lie,deploying precision mise-en-scene to transform the rambling country house that is the film’s sole location into a series of inter-nested boxes and closets in which strange skeletons inevitably await. With their zealous embrace of Sarmiento’s introspective writings, Piñeiro’s youthful and self-absorbed characters once again become the delightfully improbable vehicles for thoughtful reflections on the history of modern Argentina.

They All Lie (Todos mienten) introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Matías Piñeiro.

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