Mauro

In a rich year for new Argentine Cinema, Mauro was one of the surprises. The hero of the title is a Jack-of-all-trades who leads an inconspicuous life on the fringes of big-city crime. It looks as if there are prospects for a grander life when he decides to become a forger and meets a nice girl. 　　Mauro walks through Buenos Aires and buys things. It doesn’t matter what: a cheap T-shirt on the market, a beer in a nightclub, a scarf. He doesn’t buy to possess, but to get rid of his money. It's forged, you see, and Mauro is a huckster who has to put it surreptitiously into circulation. When Mauro decides to set up his own counterfeiting operation with his friend Luis, and at the same time falls in love with the mysterious Paula, his life goes up a couple of gears. 　　In his debut, Hernán Rosselli records Mauro's world in an observant, social-realist style, shot in his own neighbourhood and with many of his friends in supporting roles. He occasionally interrupts this narration on the edge of fact and fiction with poetic sequences of nostalgic videos and reflections by Mauro in voice-over. 　　Between the lines, Rosselli sketches a sharp picture of today’s Argentina: a collapsing economy in which the poor fight it out amongst themselves and in the meantime get even poorer.