Directed by Lucrecia Martel | 115 mins | 2017
A scruffy bureaucrat for the Spanish crown hopelessly angles for ways to get ahead in this audacious vision of 18th-century colonial empire, adapted from Antonio de Benedetto’s 1956 novel of the same name. Don Diego’s anti-epic progress in a far-flung South American outpost lays bare the inglorious realities of a system built for subjugation, all envisioned with Martel’s wry intelligence and bracing stylistic poise.