MUBI Announces the North American Theatrical Release of THE DELINQUENTS by Rodrigo Moreno, Argentina’s Official Oscars® Submission
The Beguiling, Unpredictable and Existentialist Heist Movie Opens Wednesday, October 18 at Film at Lincoln Center and the Angelika Film Center in New York City, Followed by Other Cities Including Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco
MUBI is proud to announce the North American theatrical release of The Delinquents (Los delincuentes), the surreal and wondrous heist film and latest feature from acclaimed Argentine writer-director Rodrigo Moreno, which has been announced as Argentina’s official candidate for the Academy Awards® best international feature.
An imaginative and offbeat heist film unlike any other, The Delinquents had its world premiere at the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival and had its much-anticipated US premiere as part of the Main Slate of the 61st New York Film Festival last week. The film opens on Wednesday, October 18 at Film at Lincoln Center and the Angelika Film Center in New York City, and on Friday, October 27 at the Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles, followed by other cities including Chicago and San Francisco.
Set amidst the dreary cubicles of a Buenos Aires bank, The Delinquents reinvents the heist film as a free-flowing adventure like no other. Bank employee Morán (Daniel Eliás) dreams up a scheme to liberate himself from corporate monotony: he’ll steal enough money to support a modest retirement, then confess and serve prison time while his co-worker holds on to the cash.
Soon under pressure by a company investigator, Morán’s accomplice Román (Esteban Bigliardi)––playfully, an anagram of Morán––heads to a remote rural idyll to hide the funds. There, he encounters a mysterious woman, Norma––anagram of Román––who changes his life forever. Repetitions and Russian dolls begin to pop up in the film’s second half, and as the increasingly offbeat and wondrous elements begin to unfold, Moreno’s beguiling zig-zag approach starts to shine.
Parasite meets Jacques Rivette meets Jorge Luis Borges in the latest hopscotching film from Argentine writer-director Moreno, whose The Delinquents melds the existential and the playful to explore the nature of freedom itself. Suffused with timeless beauty, this cinematic discovery is at turns surreal, relatable, funny, romantic, surprising, restorative—and above all—a delight.
THE DELINQUENTS. Los delincuentes, Argentina/Brazil/Chile/Luxembourg, 2023, 180 min. In Spanish with English subtitles. Written and directed by Rodrigo Moreno; Producer: Ezequiel Borovinsky; Cinematography: Inés Duacastella and Alejo Maglio; Editors: Manuel Ferrari, Nicolás Goldbart, Rodrigo Moreno; Production Designers: Laura Caligiuri and Gonzalo Delgado; With Daniel Elías, Esteban Bigliardi, Margarita Molfino, Germán de Silva, Mariana Chaud. A MUBI Release.
About the Director:
Rodrigo Moreno is an Argentine filmmaker born and based in Buenos Aires. His films were awarded and exhibited in several film festivals like Berlinale, Donostia/San Sebastian, Toronto, Sundance, Rotterdam, Viennale, New Directors/New Films, London, among many others. His work was also exhibited at MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, Anthology Film Archives and Lincoln Center (USA), Centre Pompidou (France) and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Germany). In 2017, the Ibertigo foundation from Spain organized a retrospective of his work in Las Palmas. He teaches Film Direction at the Universidad del Cine de Buenos Aires. Moreno sits on the editorial board of the annual publication Revista de Cine where he also writes articles and essays on cinema. He has also ventured into the visual arts with photography, experimental video and performing arts. His performance “Professional Radio Announcers Read Karl Marx’s Capital” co-created with Bruno Dubner, was a finalist of ArteBA/Petrobras, one of the most prestigious visual arts awards of South America.
