Two orphaned brothers, one Zen center, zero easy answers about Argentine trauma.
Un Buda follows two brothers orphaned as children when their parents were taken by the military during the "Dirty Wars" of the 1970s in Argentina. Tomas is now a drifting and withdrawn young man who experiments with ascetic practices and has an instinctive compassion for others. His older brother Rafael is a university philosophy professor, detached and alone. Their struggles with each other and the world around them in Buenos Aires take a dramatic turn when they find themselves at a rural Zen center.
Direction
Rafecas directs himself with zero vanity, all ache.
Cinematography
Buenos Aires grays vs. Zen center stillness — visual grief processing.
Writing
Philosophy professor who can't philosophize his way out of pain.
Director
Diego Rafecas
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during Argentina's post-dictatorship reckoning, when 'disappeared' parents became a national conversation — this film refuses the tidy therapeutic narrative.
Diego Rafecas, a real-life Zen practitioner, cast himself as the brother who CANNOT access what Tomas finds — deliberate self-critique or accidental confession?
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