The New Ruins. 2024. Argentina. Directed by Manuel Embalse. World premiere. In Spanish; English subtitles. 89 min.
Personal obsession and archeological excavation meet in Manuel Embalse’s propulsive second feature, culled from a decade’s worth of documenting e-waste in his native Buenos Aires and farther afield. The cracked screens, stray wires, old monitors, and obsolete devices that populate the quotidian and weird landscapes become the subject of Embalse’s gently absurd, sometimes unsettling first-person musings on the technologies that have become central to daily life. This audiovisual rollercoaster through digital flotsam and jetsam unleashes meditations on memory, environmental crisis, and overproduction. With curiosity and verve, The New Ruins peers into the glow of the screen and searches for meaning in the traces of modern-day fossils.