Dead Youth

Between 1997 and 2007, more than 30 young people committed suicide in the remote Argentine city of Las Heras, some 1,500 kilometers south of Buenos Aires. That's a lot for a population of only 18,000 -- in any case, enough to be noticed. When the town was founded, it was literally a terminus: the last station and turning-around point for all the trains. Now it seems to be fast becoming the metaphorical terminus for many. In , director Leandro Listorti gives us the names of the young people who took their lives one by one, and then tries to capture the emptiness they left behind in images. Images of empty chairs in classrooms, abandoned factory buildings, deserted streets. Images in which life is never too far away: a dog barks, a truck approaches. The soundtrack not only provides commentary in this manner, but it also gives the floor to the people whom the children left behind. They speculate on why so many youths have taken their lives, or simply talk about the son or daughter they lost. In the process, Listorti constructs a poetic search for the reasons and motives behind the suicides.