Sightlines · reception

How A Twelve-Year Night was received

2018 · Álvaro Brechner · A Twelve-Year Night on Sightlines

The arc

Premiered quietly in Venice's Orizzonti sidebar in 2018 and missed the Oscar nomination Uruguay hoped for — then Netflix picked it up and turned it into a slow-burn word-of-mouth title, now one of the most-watched Uruguayan films ever made.

What’s debated

The recurring gripe among fans is that it was robbed of a Foreign Language Oscar nomination in the brutally stacked Roma/Shoplifters year — Uruguay's best-ever shot, gone unrewarded.

Its footprint

It's become the film people reach for to explain José 'Pepe' Mujica — 'the world's poorest president' — to newcomers: watch this, then understand why the man is revered.

Where it stands

A quiet Letterboxd favorite of Latin American cinema — the 'you must see this' entry point to Uruguayan film, and arguably its most internationally visible drama.

Did you know? When the film premiered at Venice 2018, Mujica himself was at the same festival — as the subject of Emir Kusturica's documentary 'El Pepe: A Supreme Life', which screened days apart from the drama about his imprisonment.