The Borders of the Law: Judicial Scenario and Gender Violence in Argentinian Cinema

In this essay I analyze four instances in the representation of the juridical-legal scenario in relation to gender violence (especially rape and femicide) in the Argentine cinema since the nineties. Despite the fact that in all cases there is a questioning of justice (and a staging of injustice), in all the films that I will analyze different legal or juridical dilemmas arise. Either in the form of a denouncement of a crime that shocked the entire Argentine society (El caso Maria Soledad), or of a questioning of justice in the midst of impunity and neoliberalism and a simultaneous invisibility of gender and women (Cenizas del paraiso) or a questioning of justice and the remnants of the terrorist state but now anchored in the question of a femicide (El secreto de sus ojos), or a theoretical discussion about justice that uses the corpse of a young woman as a background and as an excuse to discuss to stage a male dispute in the legal scenario (Tesis sobre un homicidio), all the films that I am going to analyze delineate the law and, above all, its edges, that is, what is not represented in the legal or juridical scenario but it is often a determining factor in judicial decisions that violate justice and women's rights.