Milagros Mumenthaler's The Currents is releasing soon in US theatres.
Ahead of the release, Mumenthaler sat down with Outlook for an exclusive interview.
The conversation touched on the purposeful ambiguity the film holds as well as the larger state of Argentine cinema.
In 2025, leading Argentine auteur Milagros Mumenthaler delivered one of the year’s most arresting psychodramas. It’s one of those films that pulls you in, keeps teasing you even as it maintains an unsteady ground. Early in the film, a Buenos Aires fashion designer, Lina (Isabel Aimé González Sola), jumps into a river while in Geneva. This shock to her senses heightens the remove from her carefully honed successful life Lina has long been repressing. She can’t open up to her husband instead floats around unmoored. Much like the film’s heroine, we’re left suspended. Mumenthaler creates a richly interpretive space where we can wander, wonder, construct a tiny universe of projections. It’s as beguilingly evasive as lushly enveloping. Mumenthaler builds a dense aural world where each clue and sharp glimpse seems to bare more than dialogues.
The Currents had its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival 2025 before hopping to San Sebastián and New York. Ahead of the film’s US release, Outlook’s Debanjan Dhar caught up with Milagros Mumenthaler for a chat.
I’m curious about how you built subjectivity and perspective, how you shifted between access and distance. Could you discuss how you worked out what to reveal versus what to hold back, what to establish and what to just suggest?
I did this important work around the character of Lina beyond what we see. I reconstructed her life so I had this intimate knowledge. Within this creation process, you put yourself into the character’s shoes, her skin, and then the character turns autonomous. The character dictates what is revealed and what’s hidden, where she decides to put her gaze. The film portrays how she perceives the world that surrounds her. So, if Lina chooses not to look for answers or diagnosis, she just wants to ride this state out. If I as a director give out information that she doesn’t want, that’d be betraying the character.
How do you envision Lina breaking out of this estrangement? Is it only through confronting the feelings? Is there any release at all?
Lina’s daughter is a strong anchor. If she makes any efforts to remain in the situation, it’s because of her. However, ultimately we don’t know what destiny has in store for Lina. For the time being, she may be sticking around. But she’s undergoing a healing process. If she doesn’t do deep work, it’s unlikely that she won’t go back to a crisis that takes her to the abyss. In the film, Lina shirks this work. She just solves the things that come up.
You do like a long rehearsal period. You also spoke that you did write a lot more and etched out Lina’s life, her childhood, how she met her husband etc. Could you take me through the rehearsals? Are you purely following the script or also working with the excess material? Or are you working more with body, gesture, voice?
I do provide the additional information to my actors beforehand. Firstly, we think about the body the actor inhabits. How is Lina breathing? How does she articulate? Lina is a decisive woman who gives orders. We establish things like those before we get into other intricacies of the exact situation. Then, we work with the script, the bonds threaded in. For Lina, it was interesting to work on small, unexpected gestures. That gives a specificity to the person who’s in an altered state with her body that’s out of control.
I want to get your sense of distribution and exhibition on left of field cinema in Argentina. There’s the looming de funding of INCAA, the national film and TV body. Your film did release last year. Talk about the reception, how you have witnessed the distribution landscape change from your first feature, which was like fifteen years back.
Every time I premiere a film, it feels like things are getting worse. Here in Argentina, we are used to it. We are in a state of anaesthesia. We are numbed to it. When the film released in Argentina, it felt like an act of resistance against the current government. When we were shooting, it was the only project filming in Argentina at the time. Streaming platforms are here to change the game worldwide. They certainly changed the way you watch a film. There’s a shift in tension. But cinema is a site of resistance. Historically, movie theatres were places you’d inform and tell a story. I do believe they will remain as different windows out into the world.
You do take your film with each film. Your previous one was nine years ago. Have you started thinking of any new project? What ideas are floating on the horizon?
Yes, I am currently working on my new project. I don’t think it should take me nine years this time! (laughs). I’m working with a male protagonist and it’s going to be a love story.
Your film was much loved in IFFK when it screened there last year…
I was really surprised to find out later that the film was screened at three different festivals in India in three different regions. Something about the film must have spoken to people.
The Currents starts a US theatrical run May 29 via Kino Lorber. With special thanks to Anabella Tidona for translating.
