WINNER: Special Jury Prize, Jeonju International Film Festival
“Parabellum is an assured debut, filled with evocative locales and a palpable tension that captures
modern-day paranoia.”
Set in the near future, stoic Buenos Aires resident Hernán (Pablo Seijo) has had enough of the 24-hour
news cycle of environmental disasters and economic failures. Hernán and a group of equally-nondescript
citizens join a remote jungle enclave to prepare for the inevitable collapse. There, they learn a wide
range of bizarre and deadly skills, such as making homemade explosives, identifying edible roots and
fungi, crisis negotiations, and a healthy dose of firearms training. It’s a makeshift army for the modern
age.
Director Rinner takes a macro approach to the Apocalypse, focusing on society’s collective neuroses
rather than focusing on the emotional and psychological makeup of individual characters. Parabellum holds
a trembling mirror to Western anxiety about mass migrations and eroding environmental conditions,
fed by the perpetual cycle of fear and paranoia from a mass media that’s desperate for constant content.
Parabellum is an assured debut, filled with evocative locales and a palpable tension that captures
modern-day paranoia.
John McEntee
PopOptiq
