In 2001, Argentina was almost three years into an economic recession. That December, the government limited withdrawals to prevent citizens and companies from transferring funds to foreign accounts, a decision that led to widespread protest and the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa in th e following weeks.  Filmmaker Eduardo Braun Costa was 10 around that time, growing up in downtown Buenos Aires with his six siblings. His father lost his job as a result of the economic crisis, and his parents divorced not long after.  “In my life and my brothers’ and sisters’ lives, that meant very early access to a lot of freedom and independence and fun adventures, but also trying to survive, and dealing with things that we couldn’t really understand,” Costa said. “It was very, very common, just being alone in the streets with them, 10 years old, and being exposed to adulthood and strange people.” The director’s first short film, “The Liars,” which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, is a slice of life cut straight from the cake of Costa’s childhood. It follows the escapades of two brothers, Matías and Jaime, as they explore the premier cultural gathering place of the early 2000s: the shopping mall. But this shopping mall looks as if it’s falling apart, its shopkeepers scraping along day by day, and so cold indoors that most characters wear coats — a reflection of the country at the time, Costa explained. Eduardo Braun Costa, director of “The Liars.” Credit: Photo courtesy of Polymath PR Matías and Jaime’s adventure begins with trying to sneak into the Jim Carrey black comedy, “Me, Myself Irene.” Costa said that at the Sundance premiere, the entire audience laughed when they realized what movie the boys were trying to get into. While he agreed with the consensus that it’s a terrible film, full of raunchy gags and bad-taste jokes, he thought the comedy was the perfect example of the kind of age-inappropriate movie a kid would be drawn to. “We all feel attracted to cinema because we can spy on the intimacy of other people living their life,” Costa said. “When I was very young, and I started watching films, I remember the moment I started shifting and felt very interested in films that simply had nudity in them. … We have this sense of things that are starting to attract us, and we feel pulled into them, but they also come with this imposed language.” The other film Matías and Jaime watch, a “James Bond” flick, hammers home Costa’s point of how cinema can expose boys to exaggerated ideals of masculinity and sexuality. Those exaggerations can be spoonfed to boys by older men, too.  “You’re maybe just an 8-year-old, and you have a doorman showing you a photo of a naked woman, telling you, ‘Take it. It’s yours,’” Costa said. “Being a man is facing growing up fast and assuming a sexuality that you don’t really understand yet.” Costa explores this tension as Jaime is detained by mall security for shoplifting, and Matías is forced to find a stranger to pretend to be his father. The man who helps him turns out to be a loose cannon of aggression, both a vessel for emotions running high during the economic crisis and a premonition of what the boys could become. As Matías and Jaime crawl into the movie theater, a visual reference to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s 2007 short film “Dans l’obscurité,” the boys accomplish their goal of making it into “Me, Myself Irene.”  In the background, Carrey and Renée Zellweger’s characters discuss fatherhood, photographs and memories — a beautiful scene in the center of a horrible film, as Costa put it. Credit: Federico Lastra, courtesy of Sundance Institute Credit: Federico Lastra, courtesy of Sundance Institute “The Liars” is an exploration of cinema and masculinity set during Argentina’s economic crisis in the early 2000s. Costa minimized the number of shots not only to avoid wearing down the child actors, but to provide a more grounded tone. The faces of adults are mostly kept out of frame throughout the film’s runtime to put the viewer in the shoes of a child. “When I was a kid … I slept in a little room with my brother. But to me, it felt enormous. I could be under the bed, inside the wardrobe. Even a small room could feel like a landscape,” Costa said. “I wanted that sense with the camera, to be a little detached from reality.” Noah Roja and Filippo Carrozza, who played Matías and Jaime, won the Sundance Short Film Special Jury Award for Acting. Costa knew the only way a film with such a simple plot would work was if the child actors could carry the film emotionally.  “(Roja) wasn’t really paying the part. He was just being himself. He was very shy, but he had this kind of internal universe going on that felt very interesting,” Costa said. “I could really see after each day how Noah was slowly becoming an actor.” That’s best exemplified by the film’s final shot of Roja sitting in the theater, silently turning around in his seat to look back at the camera, trepidation in his eyes.  As Costa looks back on his childhood, his childhood looks back at him.  “The Liars” is available online as part of the Short Film Program 2 through 11:55 p.m. on Feb. 1. Learn more and reserve tickets at festival.sundance.org. The post Sundance short film ‘The Liars’ is a petri dish of the past appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less