Educational Media Reviews Online

Argentine director Fernando Birri attended film school in Italy during the 1950s and absorbed the neorealist style then prevalent in Italian films. Upon returning to his homeland, Birri started making documentary shorts. Tire Di'e (Throw a Dime), released in 1958, showed life in a shantytown outside Santa Fe, Argentina.

Los Inundados (The Flooded), Birri’s first feature film, was released three years later. Although not a documentary, it has the same feel as the director’s previous work. It uses the neo-realist trademarks of non-professional actors, on-location shooting, and a focus on the “common man” to tell the story of poor Santa Fe residents who are flooded from their homes.

The film is not a tightly-constructed story, but rather a series of incidents as families cope with life after the flood, dealing with a government that pays them lip service, and opposition politicians who see an opportunity to score votes for themselves. Rival newspapers take advantage of the situation to trumpet their viewpoints. Meanwhile, the inundados have to worry about possibly being evicted from the land to which they evacuated and having to start over once again. One family takes shelter in a railway car and finds itself on a train trip it can’t get off from until the bureaucracy gets all the papers in order.

A tale that’s filled more with gentle irony than outrage, Los Inundados continued Birri’s place in the vanguard of a new Latin American cinema. Libraries with good collections in Latin American studies or film studies will find it a useful purchase. This video release is presented in a letterbox format and is transferred from a restored print.

Awards

• Best First Film, Venice Film Festival, 1962