Extraordinary Stories · reception & legacy

How Extraordinary Stories has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A four-hour, no-budget curio that swept BAFICI 2008 (Special Jury Prize plus the Audience Award) and was named best Argentine film of its year by the local FIPRESCI critics, it then spent years as a hard-to-see legend passed around cinephile circles. Now it's settled all-time canon — ranked among the greatest Argentine films ever in the big 2022 critics' survey, restored and re-released, and remembered as the film that changed how Argentine independent cinema thought it could be made.

What's debated

The eternal fight is over the wall-to-wall voiceover: is four hours of near-constant narration a glorious rebirth of storytelling, or a beautifully illustrated audiobook that isn't really 'cinema' at all?

Its footprint

It's the founding monument of El Pampero Cine's outside-the-system model — no state funding, no stars, no permission — and the gateway drug to Llinás's even more insane 14-hour La Flor. Among film fans it survives as the ultimate 'trust me, the four hours fly by' recommendation.

Where it stands

A cult object turned canon climber: little-seen outside Argentina for years, it's now a Letterboxd deep-cut favourite and a 'you haven't seen it?' badge of honour among heads of 21st-century Latin American cinema.