Las facultades

Final examinations at universities are filled with subtle moments of tension and complex power games. In Argentina’s public universities, where such exams are usually oral and students have to face the probing eyes of their oft-harsh professors, they tend to be a nerve-wracking experience. In her first feature documentary, Solaas observes – herself a serious student of the “fly on the wall”-style of such masters as Frederick Wiseman – the intimacy of these tense exchanges, which are usually protected from public view. She wisely chooses only public universities and very different subjects, moving back and forth between a dozen examinations. Each one is a completely separate story – the film student not being able to remember much about Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, the convicted felon trying to rebuild his life, the complex structure of a legal presentation and more – yet the film itself builds towards a more common and universal theme: the desire to learn in spite of everything, the idea of the mind as a muscle to be trained and, finally, a powerful celebration of intelligence and work, two things rarely explored with such detail in cinema. (Viennale)