Marcelo Haber 's film , which took nine years to make. None of the interviewees seemed to have any idea—even though they were standing on the street that bears their name in Puerto Madero (a district of Buenos Aires ). It is precisely in such cases, where the goal is to bring powerful but forgotten stories back to light, that the documentary finds its full justification.
However, the screenwriters opted for a hybrid approach and incorporated a fictional element into the plot. Were it not for this detail, the film could be considered excellent.
The life of Marie Langer , better known as Mimí, is so extraordinary that it requires no fictional tricks to captivate audiences. Born on August 31, 1910, in Vienna, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she grew up in a wealthy Jewish family. At the age of 25, she received her doctorate in medicine and completed her studies at the Vienna Society (Institute for Psychoanalysis).
She found the love of her life and, shortly after graduating, traveled with her husband, Máximo, a military surgeon, to Spain, where civil war had broken out. When she wanted to return to Austria in 1937, the country had already been annexed by Germany. The couple decided to emigrate to South America, settling first in Uruguay and a few years later in Argentina.
" Maríe Langer, Deseo y Revolución " (Marie Langer, Desire and Revolution) brings together the voices of those who accompanied her since her arrival in Buenos Aires—children, grandchildren, and colleagues whom she had influenced. In Buenos Aires, she was the only woman among the founding members of the Asociación Psicoanalítica Argentina (APA—Argentine Society of Psychoanalysis), alongside Angel Garma, Celes Cárcamo, Arnaldo Rascovsky, Enrique Pichón Riviere, and Enrique Ferrari Hardoy, of which she later became president.
She was also involved in the founding of the Psychology Association and later the Group Therapy Association in order to give less privileged people access to psychoanalysis, which until then had been a privilege of the rich.
Her children remember a loving, present mother, her colleagues a woman with strong social commitment and great charisma. The film also doesn't shy away from critical voices. Marie, who left Europe to escape fascism, experienced Peronism in Argentina as a form of Latin American fascism. Within the APA, she initially concealed her affinity with Marxism.
In 1951, she published Maternidad y sexo (Motherhood and Sex) , a work that revolutionized the view of female sexuality and motherhood—years before Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex . In it, Langer focused particularly on psychogenic sterility and used clinical material to demonstrate how cultural, social, and personal factors shape femininity. In her private life, however, she followed traditional gender roles: she set up her practice in her own home so she could spend more time with her children.
At that time, psychoanalysis was still relatively unpopular, and her work was groundbreaking because it combined feminist studies with medical research. Her second major book, La mujer: sus limitaciones y potencialidades (Woman, Her Limits and Possibilities) , published twenty years later, reflects both the pressure exerted by the Peronists and her continued commitment to women's psychology.
After the 1969 International Psychoanalytic Congress in Rome, her life changed. She revived her Marxist stance and joined the "Plataforma Internacional" (International Platform), which questioned the ideological neutrality of psychoanalysis. In 1971, after the publication of her second book and the congress in Vienna, she resigned from the APA, convinced that there is no such thing as ideology-free psychoanalysis. Every therapist has an attitude, whether expressed or not, and this is inevitably mirrors in their work.
Her contribution to the panel discussion "Madness and Society" at the Mexican Psychoanalytic Circle (Círculo Psicoanalítico Mexicano) was enthusiastically received. These contacts led her to choose Mexico as her country of exile when, in October 1974, she was forced to leave Argentina again—widowed and with four children. The government of María Estela Martínez de Perón had sentenced her to death because of her political activism.
In Mexico, she continued to work tirelessly, founded self-help groups for exiles, opened her home to other displaced people, and never gave up. She was invited to Cuba and spoke with Fidel Castro—according to legend, more about recipes than revolution. In her own words, the work in Cuba and Nicaragua gave her new energy. She felt a particular sense of obligation to torture victims; she treated many of them free of charge. Finally, she returned to Buenos Aires, the place of her greatest happiness, to die there surrounded by family and friends.
Technically, the film has serious flaws: Obviously produced on a shoestring, it mixes high-quality archive footage with poorly filmed interviews in which sometimes only one eye or half a face is visible.
The image quality fluctuates between professional camera and cell phone footage; some images are blurry or pixelated. More serious is the unnecessary fiction, which disrupts the narrative flow without contributing anything. Nevertheless, the 78 minutes are extremely entertaining – carried by the power of the story and the vivid memories of the contemporary witnesses.
The premiere took place on August 24th at the packed Gaumont cinema, as part of the screenings of the Cineclub Núcleo, a long-standing institution in the city. The website marielanger.org provides the documentary's history, a list of interviewees, and a profile of the director. Haber and his assistant De Martino are members of the Art-Kiné collective. The collective focuses on film and media-related research, with an emphasis on theory, aesthetics, social and cultural practices, and the relationships between film and other art forms .
Laura Ragucci is a multifaceted artist who works as an art critic, teacher, artist, and photographer. Her passion for art and culture is enriched by her extensive travel experiences, which have allowed her to integrate diverse cultural influences into her work.
After years of studying languages and working with computer science, she turned to creative expression through photography and writing. Since 2020, she has devoted herself primarily to art criticism, drawing on her studies at the National University of Art (UNA).
She writes her art reviews purely for the joy of artistic discourse. Laura embodies the spirit of a tireless explorer whose curiosity has led her down diverse paths.
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