What is said in Azor matters greatly, especially since it is carefully considered before being voiced. What isn’t said is equally importan...
What is said in Azor matters greatly, especially since it is carefully considered before being voiced. What isn’t said is equally important – if not more. After all, this is a land in which a word or two out of place could render you vulnerable to persecution or even death.
The setting of Andreas Fontana’s Azor might be specific – Argentina in the early 1980s, in the wake of the military coup of 1976. But the movie’s skillful examination of the interplay between power and wealth applies to any country that has opportunistic elites, crony capitalists and unscrupulous financial enablers.
Azor, which is out on Mubi, follows a banker and his wife who arrive in Buenos Aires from Geneva to replace a partner who has disappeared. Yvan (Fabrizio Rongione) has a manifold mission: to find out what has happened to his bank representative Keys, in addition to retaining old clients and converting potential investors.
Over a hundred minutes, not one of them wasted, the first-time director delicately reveals the amoral nexus between private banking and the power elite.
“A banker does not ask himself moral questions when he makes a transaction, he asks himself much more pragmatic questions: what risk am I taking? Is it good for...
