Do you know Marie Langer?

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.

Her life changed after the International Psychoanalytic Congress in Rome in 1969. She resumed 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 an ideology-free psychoanalysis is impossible. Every therapist has a stance, whether expressed or not, and this is inevitably reflected 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 house 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 about revolution.

In her own words, her work in Cuba and Nicaragua gave her new energy. She felt a particular commitment to torture victims; she treated many of them free of charge. She eventually returned to Buenos Aires, the place of her greatest happiness, to die 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 in the well-filled Gaumont cinema, as part of the screenings of the Cineclub Núcleo, an institution with a long tradition 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 arts.

Technical data:
Director: Marcelo Haber
Screenplay: Marcelo Haber, Belén De Martino, Horacio Legrás, Camila Silva
Production: Horacio Legrás
Year: 2024
Duration: 78 minutes