Currents
Life of Jorge Luis Borges
Mariano Llinás
U.S. Premiere
Argentinean filmmaker Mariano Llinás’s (La Flor, NYFF56) sorta-documentary about the life of Jorge Luis Borges tells the entirety of his life story by rummaging through rediscovered documents, poems, drafts, sketches, manuscripts, and clippings.
- Runtime
- 323 min
- Country
- Argentina
- Language
- Spanish
- Year
- 2026
- More information
- Official film page
Screenings
Screens with two 15-minute intermissions.
With the complex nested structures of epics like La Flor (NYFF56), Argentinean filmmaker Mariano Llinás has worn his Jorge Luis Borges influence on his sleeve, transposing labyrinthine narrative gambits to a giddily inventive cinematic realm. It’s no surprise that Llinás has decided to delve into the life of his beloved fellow countryman—in his own cheeky, aptly sprawling fashion. Llinás’s sorta-documentary is a maniacally detailed research project, telling Borges’s life story by rummaging through archives and private collections, rediscovered documents, poems, drafts, and sketches, and materializing this literary phantom onscreen through recitations, readings, and irreverent narration. Luxuriously stretched out over three parts, Life of Jorge Luis Borges shuttles around the world, from Geneva to Brooklyn to Iceland, with many pit stops and dead ends along the way. It’s as much a celebration of Borges himself as of the cartographical pleasure of roads leading nowhere in particular.
Screens with two 15-minute intermissions.
With the complex nested structures of epics like La Flor (NYFF56), Argentinean filmmaker Mariano Llinás has worn his Jorge Luis Borges influence on his sleeve, transposing labyrinthine narrative gambits to a giddily inventive cinematic realm. It’s no surprise that Llinás has decided to delve into the life of his beloved fellow countryman—in his own cheeky, aptly sprawling fashion. Llinás’s sorta-documentary is a maniacally detailed research project, telling Borges’s life story by rummaging through archives and private collections, rediscovered documents, poems, drafts, and sketches, and materializing this literary phantom onscreen through recitations, readings, and irreverent narration. Luxuriously stretched out over three parts, Life of Jorge Luis Borges shuttles around the world, from Geneva to Brooklyn to Iceland, with many pit stops and dead ends along the way. It’s as much a celebration of Borges himself as of the cartographical pleasure of roads leading nowhere in particular.