El juego de Arcibel
Encyclopedia
El juego de Arcibel is a 2003
Argentine
film
directed by Alberto Lecchi
.
The picture features Darío Grandinetti
, Diego Torres
, and others.
n country, ruled by the dictator
General Abalorio, Arcibel Alegría (Darío Grandinetti), a journalist who writes articles about chess is taken to jail as political prisoner
due to a mixed-up schedule of the newspaper he works for. Arcibel, a non-political, rather solitary person, separated, and father of a two-year-old girl, will get to know a new reality he's never heard of, from inside the jail.
Arcibel spends his time learning and, luckily for him, playing chess with Palacios, his cell neighbor. As time goes by, General Abalorio is elected president after democratic elections and all political prisoners are set free, except for Arcibel, who, due to a bureaucratic mess, will be confined to jail where the rest of the criminals are locked up.
The jail gets crowded with thieves and murderers. Pablo (Diego Torres), his new cellmate, hardly knows how to read or write and he definitely doesn't play chess. Despite Arcibel's efforts, Pablo doesn't learn a thing and therefore, Arcibel comes up with an idea. He invents a witty war game, of guerillas. In time Pablo becomes an expert. When he meets Rosalinda, Arcibel's daughter who is already in her twenties, he's touched. The day Pablo manages to beat Arcibel in the game, he runs away. Arcibel then has to undergo terrible punishments for keeping quiet about his cellmate's jailbreak. However, he holds out until time gives him another surprise. His game, Arcibel's game, is not a game anymore, it has become real, and the two leading players turn out to be no others than Pablo and his own daughter Rosalinda.
2003 in film
The year 2003 in film involved some significant events. Releases of sequels took place with movies like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Pokémon Heroes, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,...
Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
directed by Alberto Lecchi
Alberto Lecchi
Alberto Lecchi is an Argentine film, screenwriter and film producer.Born in Buenos Aires, Lecchi started working in Argentine cinema in 1979, as a second assistant director to Hugo Sofovich in the three films he directed that year...
.
The picture features Darío Grandinetti
Darío Grandinetti
Darío Grandinetti is an Argentine actor. Among many other films, he worked under the direction of Pedro Almodóvar in the Academy Award winner Talk to Her....
, Diego Torres
Diego Torres
Diego Antonio Caccia Torres , is an Argentine Grammy Award-nominated pop singer and composer.-Biography:Diego Torres was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of Argentine singer Lolita Torres...
, and others.
Plot
1967 - in Miranda, an imaginary Latin AmericaLatin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n country, ruled by the dictator
Dictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
General Abalorio, Arcibel Alegría (Darío Grandinetti), a journalist who writes articles about chess is taken to jail as political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
due to a mixed-up schedule of the newspaper he works for. Arcibel, a non-political, rather solitary person, separated, and father of a two-year-old girl, will get to know a new reality he's never heard of, from inside the jail.
Arcibel spends his time learning and, luckily for him, playing chess with Palacios, his cell neighbor. As time goes by, General Abalorio is elected president after democratic elections and all political prisoners are set free, except for Arcibel, who, due to a bureaucratic mess, will be confined to jail where the rest of the criminals are locked up.
The jail gets crowded with thieves and murderers. Pablo (Diego Torres), his new cellmate, hardly knows how to read or write and he definitely doesn't play chess. Despite Arcibel's efforts, Pablo doesn't learn a thing and therefore, Arcibel comes up with an idea. He invents a witty war game, of guerillas. In time Pablo becomes an expert. When he meets Rosalinda, Arcibel's daughter who is already in her twenties, he's touched. The day Pablo manages to beat Arcibel in the game, he runs away. Arcibel then has to undergo terrible punishments for keeping quiet about his cellmate's jailbreak. However, he holds out until time gives him another surprise. His game, Arcibel's game, is not a game anymore, it has become real, and the two leading players turn out to be no others than Pablo and his own daughter Rosalinda.