Please note: This was screened in July 2025
Leonor is an upper-middle-class, committed housewife whose comfortable life falls apart when she learns of her husband’s infidelity. With more fear than conviction, she sets out on a voyage of self-discovery. It is an act born of integrity, a refusal to live a lie, but as her encounters with family and economic institutions reinforce her social non-existence, it becomes a gesture of active resistance.
Made under the military regime, the story of Leonor’s move from a family home and a life centred on pleasing others to a desire to create a life outside “the system” was dangerously challenging to the symbolic order in place. Bemberg struggled for five years to get her script approved by censors, who saw her criticism extending from family to state, and Leonor as an emblem of rupture.
UK Premiere of the 4K restoration, which was carried out by the digital preservation program of Argentinian titles, Recuperar, by Gotika Labs and DAC in 2018.
Co-curated by Cinema Mentiré as part of Other Ways of Seeing, with support from BFI Awarding Funds from National Lottery as part Daring to Dare: The Films of María Luisa Bemberg (1922-1995), a celebration of the trailblazing Argentinian filmmaker on the 30th anniversary of her passing.
