Radio supplies both a workplace and a public stage in Marcelo Martinessi’s Narciso. The Paraguayan filmmaker’s 2026 feature follows a young man whose enthusiasm for rock and roll unsettles the world around him in Asunción. Its recent U.S. premiere at AFI Silver is followed by an October festival engagement in Athens, where the official program lists screenings on October 4 and 8. The film’s circulation brings renewed attention to the choices behind its historical fiction.
Diro Romero plays Narciso Arévalos, who returns from Buenos Aires and seeks a place on the airwaves. AFI’s account sets the action in 1959, during Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship. His growing appeal among young listeners brings popular music into contact with political and social control. Martinessi writes, directs and co-produces; Sebastián Peña-Escobar shares the producing credit. The program lists Spanish and Guarani among the film’s languages.
Martinessi explained the adaptation to Francesco Bacci in an August interview with Video Librarian. His source was Guido Rodríguez Alcalá’s novel, which fictionalizes the history surrounding radio worker Bernardo Aranda. The director said he did not believe he had sufficient material for a conventional biography. Instead, he wanted to construct Narciso through other people’s attention: those looking for him, desiring him or seeking proximity to him.
That account helps distinguish historical inspiration from a claim to solve a real death. It also gives viewers a concrete question to bring to the film: what can a person’s surrounding relationships reveal that a straightforward life story might miss? The director’s stated method makes the people doing the watching central to the project. A production account is a starting point for viewing.
Martinessi also told Video Librarian that a radio production of Dracula offered a way to work with fear. He connected it to a popular Paraguayan radio serial of the period, drawing another form of storytelling into the station’s world. Music and serialized drama share a medium here; both become material through which the filmmaker can approach the larger social environment.
The FIPRESCI award record confirms the film’s recognition at the 2026 Berlinale. In a separate March interview with El País, Martinessi described his interest in the social conditions that sustain authoritarian rule, beyond the figure of a dictator. The recent festival appearances offer a route into that discussion through a specifically Paraguayan work. Its point of entry is the radio station: a place where entertainment, ambition and the power to reach an audience meet.