Lisandro Gonzalez Ursi

Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.

The public high school named Manuel Mujica Lainez is located in Villa Lugano, on the margins of the City of Buenos Aires, where the highest poverty rates are found. During a whole year, a school workshop was filmed on a day to day basis, where 17 year old teenagers worked on the collective mapping of their neighbourhood. With a thorough filming device upon this school assignment, classroom life takes shape and, at the same time, the external social issues lived by the students arise.

This documentary follows the formation of a housing cooperative among the inhabitants of La Lechería, who came to buy land in Mataderos to build decent housing. After years of organization and work, events precipitate: the eviction of the property arrives and with it, the promise of government compensation. But the residents of Mataderos form a front to reject the new residents as “villeros”, with a press campaign and attacks.