‘La libertad doble’ Cannes Review: Lisandro Alonso’s Quiet Cinema Confronts a Country Falling Apart
When a man is forced to care for his mentally ill sister in a world without institutional support, their uneasy bond becomes a meditation on family and freedom.
When Lisandro Alonso premiered La libertad back in 2001, it would have been impossible to foresee much of what the following quarter century would bring. First, that this small, almost homemade film would travel to the Cannes Film Festival and become an iconic work of the then-emerging Nuevo Cine Argentino. Second, that Alonso’s own career would grow and evolve to the point where he would become one of the very few filmmakers in the world to premiere all of his films—seven, including this one—in different sections at Cannes. And third, that its oft-interpreted title would eventually turn into a phrase used, especially in Argentina, in a way radically different from anything he might have imagined.
La libertad doble is a sequel to that film, one that seeks to reclaim the term and restore its spiritual meaning, stripped of any economic connotation—or, if anything, turning it on its head. In fact, it could well have been titled La libertad avanza, though the irony would likely have been misunderstood, particularly considering that its protagonist, Misael (played once again by Misael Saavedra, now twenty-five years older), has traded his axe for a chainsaw. Beyond any cheeky readings, the director of Jauja—whose films are rarely associated with lightness or humor—is not interested in making jokes. If anything, this is a far more pointed and grounded critique of what it means to live in a country where the state has effectively withdrawn from people’s lives.
For a while, La libertad doble might pass for a remake of the earlier film, now featuring an older, heavier protagonist, updated technology, a crisper digital image, and a somewhat less languid editing rhythm than that globally influential work so often cited in discussions of slow cinema or observational filmmaking. But at a certain point in his routine as a woodcutter, Misael receives news that his sister—who has been institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital for many years—has escaped again, and he is asked to come in and discuss the situation.
There, the doctors—who have managed to find her and bring her back—explain that due to budget cuts they will have to discharge patients and drastically scale back their services. This means that, with only a small monthly supply of medication (for now still covered), Misael must take his sister—played by Chilean actress Catalina Saavedra—to live with him in his makeshift shack in the middle of the rural land where he works, in near-total abandonment.
The woman is neither violent nor dangerous, at least as long as she remains medicated—or so says the doctor, played by Adrián Fondari. But she is withdrawn, inhabiting a world of her own—she loves watering plants and clings to a watering can as if it were her most treasured possession—and she has a tendency to wander off in search of the tracks of a long-defunct train line. Much of the film unfolds around the strange coexistence between these two largely silent figures: one bound to routine, the other adrift in a space that suddenly feels boundless.
La libertad doble never declares its intentions outright, nor does it turn—at least not directly—into a denunciatory film about budget cuts to public healthcare under Argentina’s far-right government. And yet, that reading feels unavoidable. Its ambitions are broader, more generous, offering a humanist gaze at its small universe that, through its handling of time and silence, becomes almost philosophical. What are we really talking about when we talk about freedom? Is family a limit to that idea? Or could it be that what we call “madness” is in fact a far greater—and more genuine—form of freedom than anything the market can offer?
What Alonso presents here is also another portrait of fragile bonds lost and tentatively rediscovered—a recurring thread throughout his filmography, alongside the theme of mental health, which figures prominently in Liverpool. These are relationships between family members long estranged, people who struggle to articulate what they feel, yet maintain—as in Jauja—an indefinable but real connection to what they have lost, and may never recover. It is a form of solidarity that is neither obvious nor sentimental—the sister’s presence disrupts Misael’s routines and unsettles him more than once—but it emerges quietly, expressed through gestures rather than words.
In a quietly beautiful way, with a poetic economy reminiscent of a haiku, La libertad doble also marks a return for Alonso to his origins after several large-scale, demanding productions that took years to come together. Back in the rural terrain of the original film, working again with much of the same crew and recapturing its spirit rather than its form—the sequel moves at a different pace and relies less on extended long takes—this new film places its characters and their painful trajectory within the context of a very real country that abandons its most vulnerable. Freedom, it suggests, is something very different from what is currently being proclaimed.
