Extract from Neil Young's blog Film Lounge

"Writer-director-producer-editor Alonso quickly established himself as one of the most original, poetic, challenging and uncompromising of current bumper crop of Argentinian filmmakers with his first two features, La Libertad (2001) and Los Muertos (2004) - both of them audaciously slow, meditative, near-wordless affairs, half-fictional and half-documentary, focussing on the quotidian activities of a solitary male. La Libertad chronicled a day in the life of logger Misael Saavedra; Los Muertos followed ex-convict Argentino Vargas as he journeyed downriver to visit family-members.

Though set in the city rather than the country, Fantasma is in some ways more of the same: for roughly an hour, we observe the (non-pro) "stars" of Alonso's previous films, Saavedra and Vargas, wandering (separately) around a near-deserted, multi-level, labyrinthine Buenos Aires theatre-complex where Los Muertos is being shown. Again, it's an audaciously slow, meditative, near-wordless affair, half-fictional and half-documentary, focussing on quotidian activities. One is reminded of Wim Wenders' instructions to Dennis Hopper during the making of The American Friend, when the actor was told to come up with things that one might do "only alone." (…)

But the element which elevates Fantasma to the level of minor masterpiece is Alonso's astonishing use of sound: if there's a "story" to be somehow divined here, it's to be found in the subtle symphony of human, mechanical and even animal (whose is that dog?) noises – which are so diverting that never for a moment notice the fact that there's hardly any dialogue in the movie at all. Alonso meanwhile bookends the "action" with two blasts of loud electric-guitar music which provide suitably mood-enhancing punctuation. The cumulative effect is stunning and spellbinding: a spooky, darkly witty journey around a "cinema" that's also a bold journey around, into – and perhaps even beyond - cinema itself."

More here http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/the-phantom-of-liberty-lisandro-alonso-s-fantasma-9-10/

ABOUT LISANDRO ALONSO

One of the most accomplished and original Argentine artists working in contemporary Latin American cinema, Alonso combines fiction and documentary techniques to create meditative, mysteriously atmospheric films. Each film follows a solitary man, signifying a larger journey or inner quest, within exquisite natural landscapes shot on 35mm. Working with non-actors from rural communities, the slow rhythm of everyday life is distinctive and mesmerizing.