Ezequiel Erriquez Mena

I consider myself a film director who seeks to situate himself among people. I am interested in exploring family relationships and their conflicts, and in making films that address political issues from the perspective of ordinary people and private bonds.

At the same time, I pursue formal experimentation. My work explores the dialogue between fiction and documentary, often through collaboration with both non-professional and professional actors. I approach deconstruction as a way to explore new forms of expression, and my characters are always in a state of transformation. In recent years, I have focused on working with actors. This search has led me to observe the beauty of the creative process, as if one mask were to fall away to make room for something more vulnerable and truthful.

During my stay at the Saari Residence, I will be writing the script for my fiction feature film, Exercise of Madness. The film explores how social instability and political violence slowly infiltrate everyday life and affect a middle working-class family living on the outskirts of a large city like Buenos Aires.

The idea emerged from memories of my childhood during the neoliberal 1990s and the 2001 economic and social crisis, the most violent upheaval in Argentina’s recent history. This film is my attempt to return to that territory, a space suspended between memory and oblivion, and to transform a personal experience into a contemporary cinematic reflection. I seek to reflect on the current sociopolitical climate of our times, in which fear, denial, and violence reappear in new forms.

Ezequiel Erriquez Mena is a film director, screenwriter, and teacher working between Argentina and Spain. He studied Film at the University of Buenos Aires.

His debut feature film, To the Cantábrica, premiered in 2012 at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. During post-production, he participated in Berlinale Talents and worked with Danish editor Molly Malene Stensgaard. The film was selected for festivals such as BAL–BAFICI, Mar del Plata, Havana, Montevideo, and Taipei.
His experimental documentary feature Caballo Negro was developed at Arte Di Tella and premiered at FIDBA in 2022. The Dogs of the Port, his second documentary project (currently in post-production), was awarded at FICVIÑA WIP.

The Flood, his second fiction feature film, won the IILA – Cinema 2023 Award for Best Feature Film in Rome. The film was developed at Binger Film Lab (The Netherlands), the INCAA Raymundo Gleyzer Program, and the Buenos Aires Biennial, and received an award at MAFIZ (Málaga Film Festival).
Emi, his third feature film, won the INCAA Feature Film Grant and, in 2024, received the Best Project Award at the WIP Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. In 2025, the film premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival and was selected for the Thessaloniki Film Festival.