FILM FEST KNOX Free Screening Series | The Currents
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Milagros Mumenthaler · 2025 · 104 minutes
June 24, 2026 · Regal Riviera · 7:00 p.m.
Programmer’s Note
I’d never heard of Milagros Mumenthaler before seeing The Currents last year in Toronto. Over the past twenty years, Argentina has produced many of my favorite films and filmmakers, so I’ve made a habit of taking a chance on new work, especially movies written and directed by women (Lucrecia Martel, Laura Citarella, and Romina Paula are some favorites). “New Argentine Cinema” isn’t an especially useful label, but the movement started by a young generation of artists two decades ago has now grown into middle age, and the films they’re making continue to mature as well. (Lisandro Alonso’s latest, Double Freedom, was among the most critically acclaimed at Cannes last month.)
I went back for a second viewing of The Currents at TIFF, something I’ve only done once or twice in my many years of attending fests. Mumenthaler’s style might be compared to “magical realism,” in that she works within straight-ahead narrative conventions but does so in a world of unexplainable flights of fancy. I find it all totally mesmerizing. I hope every year to find a couple movies like this that introduce me to a new voice in cinema. I wasn’t able to program it at Film Fest Knox 2025 (despite my best efforts), so I’m excited to share it now. - Darren Hughes
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While visiting Switzerland to accept an award for her work in the fashion industry, Argentinian designer Lina (Isabel Aimé González Sola) is seized by the sudden urge to jump off a bridge into an icy river. She survives the plunge, returns to Buenos Aires, and tells no one, but a transformation has taken place within her. Left with a paralyzing fear of water, she finds it impossible to re-adjust to her former identity as wife, mother, and artist.
The Currents premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, followed by the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and the Chicago International Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter praised the film’s “elegance and empathy” in capturing “the gaping chasm between how we present and who we are.” Writer-director Milagros Mumenthaler was born in Argentina in 1977 and studied film in Buenos Aires; her debut feature Back to Stay won the Golden Leopard at Locarno.
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“A transfixing existential mystery.” – The Hollywood Reporter
“A complicated portrait of a woman on the edge of a breakdown—or is it a breakthrough?” – RogerEbert.com
“Arrestingly styled… an entry in cinema’s rich tradition of deconstructed feminine portraiture that skids ambitiously along a tonal and stylistic spectrum between Hitchcock’s Marnie and Todd Haynes’s Safe.” – Variety
June 24, 2026 · Regal Riviera · 7:00 p.m.
Programmer’s Note
I’d never heard of Milagros Mumenthaler before seeing The Currents last year in Toronto. Over the past twenty years, Argentina has produced many of my favorite films and filmmakers, so I’ve made a habit of taking a chance on new work, especially movies written and directed by women (Lucrecia Martel, Laura Citarella, and Romina Paula are some favorites). “New Argentine Cinema” isn’t an especially useful label, but the movement started by a young generation of artists two decades ago has now grown into middle age, and the films they’re making continue to mature as well. (Lisandro Alonso’s latest, Double Freedom, was among the most critically acclaimed at Cannes last month.)
I went back for a second viewing of The Currents at TIFF, something I’ve only done once or twice in my many years of attending fests. Mumenthaler’s style might be compared to “magical realism,” in that she works within straight-ahead narrative conventions but does so in a world of unexplainable flights of fancy. I find it all totally mesmerizing. I hope every year to find a couple movies like this that introduce me to a new voice in cinema. I wasn’t able to program it at Film Fest Knox 2025 (despite my best efforts), so I’m excited to share it now. - Darren Hughes
- - -
While visiting Switzerland to accept an award for her work in the fashion industry, Argentinian designer Lina (Isabel Aimé González Sola) is seized by the sudden urge to jump off a bridge into an icy river. She survives the plunge, returns to Buenos Aires, and tells no one, but a transformation has taken place within her. Left with a paralyzing fear of water, she finds it impossible to re-adjust to her former identity as wife, mother, and artist.
The Currents premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, followed by the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and the Chicago International Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter praised the film’s “elegance and empathy” in capturing “the gaping chasm between how we present and who we are.” Writer-director Milagros Mumenthaler was born in Argentina in 1977 and studied film in Buenos Aires; her debut feature Back to Stay won the Golden Leopard at Locarno.
- - -
“A transfixing existential mystery.” – The Hollywood Reporter
“A complicated portrait of a woman on the edge of a breakdown—or is it a breakthrough?” – RogerEbert.com
“Arrestingly styled… an entry in cinema’s rich tradition of deconstructed feminine portraiture that skids ambitiously along a tonal and stylistic spectrum between Hitchcock’s Marnie and Todd Haynes’s Safe.” – Variety
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Regal Riviera stadium 8, 501 South Gay Street,Knoxville,TN,United States
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