The Delights

(Las Delicias)

Eduardo Crespo / Argentina / 2021 / 66 min
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  • IDFA - Int'l Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

  • Buenos Aires Int'l Documentary Film Festival

  • Guadalajara Int'l Film Festival

  • True/False Film Festival

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Spanish with English subtitles - Spanish language audio description available *

Treating youngsters with respect and demanding respect in return is the astute and impressive ethos of Las Delicias, an agro-technical boarding school in the Argentina countryside in the province of Entre Ríos, where more than 120 youngsters live, learn, and play together.

It is a school for all types of kids: small-town kids who want to learn more about agriculture, big-city kids who were kicked out of other schools, and kids who had nowhere to go during the school year. It is a clash of cultures. Although the school has very few resources, it provides discipline, value, and growth to these children through agriculture, schoolwork, and exercise.

In this close-knit community, distanced from their families, these young souls navigate the intersection of childhood’s end and the dawn of their youth.

* Spanish language audio description available via ALL4ACCESS App and/or .wav file when purchasing a DSL license.

Accessibility for these films was created by DICAPTA and funded under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education- Office of Special Education-OSEP, project “Enhanced Access to Video for Students with Sensory Disabilities through Emerging Technology,” TV Access H327C210001.

Press

“Instead of getting caught up in stereotypes, he manages to delve deeper into the lives of these young people, revealing the richness of their individual humanity. Las Delicias raises questions about education, youth and the search for identity, inciting reflection in troubling times.” – Juan Pablo Russo, Escribiendo Cine

“Gently inspirational...offers insight into a school aimed at helping and developing youngsters in the best way possible.” – Mark Adams, Business Doc Europe

“Without ever appealing to emotional manipulation, underlining or demagoguery, certain that his images will manage to subjugate, seduce and gradually immerse the viewer in that particular universe, Crespo achieves with patience and modesty strange moments of beauty and sensitivity.” – Diego Batlle, Otros Cines

“The narrative captures moments of joy, challenge and reflection, showing how these young people struggle to meet the expectations of their teachers while exploring their identity and place in the world.” – Juan Pablo Russo, Escribiendo Cine

About the Director
Eduardo Crespo was born in Crespo, Argentina, in 1983. He is a director and cinematographer. His latest film We Will Never Die (2020) premiered in the Official Selection of the San Sebastian Film Festival and won the New Vision Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. He directed the documentaries Crespo (The Persistence of Memory) (2016) and As Close as Possible (2012).
He was the director of photography for several films including Brief Story from the Green Planet by Santiago Loza, Again Once Again by Romina Paula, and Today I Felt No Fear by Iván Fund.
In 2021 he was developing a new project called La Gruta del viento in the Ikusmira Berriak residency at the San Sebastian Film Festival, where he won the Irusoin Award. His fourth film Las Delicias premiered in the International Competition at IDFA.
Notes on Film

“More than three years ago I started shooting a film in one of the first agro-technical schools in Argentina, a few kilometers away from the city where I was born and raised, in a rural area of the country, in the province of Entre Ríos. This school is called Las Delicias.

The school has a boarding school where more than 120 children live throughout the year, for the duration of their high school education. I started filming with some questions about the coexistence of all these kids, who enter at the age of 11, away from their homes, far from their parents and their family environment.
In this school in particular, the innocence of those who come from rural areas to learn about rural trades is mixed with the mischievousness of those who come from the city, often with other types of problems: behavioral, economic, or family problems.

Many times, in the classrooms, with their uniforms, I saw them all the same, as a whole, but at recess, in those moments of freedom and play, I could glimpse where each one of them came from. Just by listening to them I could enter their homes, see their families, perceive the different realities from which they came.”

– Eduardo Crespo, Director

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