Zama

Zama is set in a remote South American outpost of the Spanish empire in the late eighteenth century. Don Diego de Zama, a crown official played by Daniel Giménez Cacho, has spent years waiting for a letter that will transfer him to Buenos Aires. While his family remains far away and other men advance, he endures small humiliations and navigates the politics of a stagnant colonial administration. His patience erodes, and he comes to pin his hopes on capturing a notorious bandit, a pursuit that draws him further from the life he wanted. Lucrecia Martel wrote and directed the film, adapting Antonio Di Benedetto's 1956 novel.

The cast includes Lola Dueñas, Matheus Nachtergaele, Juan Minujín, Nahuel Cano and Mariana Nunes. The production was an unusually wide international effort, involving companies from Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, France, the United States and the Dominican Republic, among others, with El Deseo among the producers. It followed Leagues in Martel's filmography and preceded Our Land.

Critical response was notably stronger than the general audience reaction: the film holds a critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 115 reviews, compared with 6.7 out of 10 on IMDb from around 7,700 votes and 6.6 out of 10 on TMDB from roughly 184 votes. The gap suggests a film that reviewers valued more highly than the broader viewing public did.