Looking for Laura & Meaning in Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen

FQ contributing editor Manuel Betancourt examines duration in contemporary cinema and the playful innovations of Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen (2022). The 260 minute film is another production by El Pampero Cine, the group that produced the thirteen hour La Flor (Mariano Llinás, 2018), on which Citarella served as producer. Following the disappearance of a woman named Laura, Trenque Lauquen is a recursive mystery both in narrative and form that resists traditional narrative expectations that would elucidate the events of Laura’s disappearance and make her knowable. Betancourt writes that Trenque Lauquen maintains El Pampero Cine’s DIY spirit through creative practices that challenge the linear progression of pre-production, shooting, and editing and in doing so, facilitate Citarella’s reimagining of cinema as an experiential event.