La Flor · reception & legacy
2019 · Mariano Llinás
How La Flor has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It premiered at Argentina's BAFICI festival in 2018, took the top prize, and was instantly framed less as a movie than an event; a few years on it's settled into legend status — the 14-hour film people plan whole weekends around rather than merely watch.
What's debated
The eternal fight: is its enormous runtime a genuine artistic necessity or the ultimate cinephile endurance flex — and is it cheating to watch it in parts instead of one heroic sitting?
Its footprint
Finishing La Flor is a badge of honour — Letterboxd reviews read like summit logs, complete with timestamps, snack inventories, and 'day two' updates, and its hand-drawn flower diagram of the film's structure became its unofficial emblem.
Where it stands
A cult object of the streaming era's slow-cinema wing: the 'have you actually seen all of it?' film that separates the list-makers from the completists.