Buenos Aires, Argentina - While cutting power, a group of friends gathered in the comfort of their owners’ home to play cards. The cell phone died. A creepy snow across the city killed everyone it touched. Friends struggle to survive, and their panic is increasingly aware that human beings are threatened.
This is the premise of "Eternaut", a frightening dystopian drama from Argentina that premieres on Netflix on April 30. The six-episode Spanish series, whose sci-fi elements blend with human elasticity, hits human elasticity in Netflix's most performances, surging on Netflix's No. 1.
Netflix has renewed the show for a second season, with filming scheduled to begin next year.
But "Eternaut" has already talked about something deeper in Argentina, where legendary comic writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld wrote the original graphic novel in 1957, twenty years before he was "disappeared" by Argentina's military dictator, and all his four daughters.
Abroad, publishers are scrambling to maintain new interest in original materials. Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books said it will reissue printed English translations as demand surges in the United States.
At home, the TV adaptation reopened the historical trauma and resonated unexpectedly with the moment of anxiety disorder in Argentine society under the leadership of far-right President Javier Milei.
"The 'Eternaut' prosperity created a cultural and social event," said Martín Oesterheld, a grandson of the writer on the show. "It fills our hearts. It makes us proud."
Over the years, the surviving Oesterhelds boycotted Hollywood offers to accommodate the classic cult, a desire for the industry to seemingly irresistible destruction of other Western centers in New York City and other apocalyptic dramas.
In honor of grandfather's creation, Martín Oesterheld said the show had to be filmed in Spanish and filmed in Buenos Aires and is located in Buenos Aires.
“What he did was to eliminate the representation of science fiction that we know in Europe and America,” Martín Oesterheld said of his grandfather. “He tells this in our own way through things we know.”
Netflix is naturally beyond its saturated U.S. market, such as Latin America, he said. The streaming giant won't disclose its budget, but said the special effects show took four years of pre- and post-production, involved 2,900 people and brought $34 million to the Argentina economy.
In the show, aliens create predictable chaos on the unpredictable cityscape – wide boulevards, neoclassical architecture, antique pizza halls and dirty suburbs – bringing a curious force to the Argentines that fill the Argentines with strange powers, who have never seen their own city appear on the screen.
The protagonist doesn't play poker, but Truco, a popular Argentine trick card game. They sip from their companion’s gourd, an iconic Argentine drink made from yerba leaves. The snowfall is incredible, not just because it kills when it comes into contact. Buenos Aires only saw two snowfalls in the last century.
"From Truco's ignorance in the scene, we see that 'eTernaut' is comparing these to 'eTernaut' - life and death, light and darkness, familiar with aliens," said Argentine researcher Martín Hadis, specializing in science fiction. "It's not just a sci-fi story. It's a modern myth. That's what makes it so common."
In updating the story to what is now Argentina, the show put the United States in 1982's war with Britain in Las Malvinas or the Falkland Islands, playing the role of its hero Juan Salvo, played by the famous actor Ricardo Darín.
A protective father and brave former soldier, Salvo appeared in the group of survivors who were bothered by comrades who ruled the Argentine dictatorship to retake the South Atlantic. The defeat killed 649 Argentine soldiers, many of whom were untrained conscripts.
"The conflict in Ras Malvinas has not been closed yet and is still a bloody wound," Darien told the Associated Press. "This brings the subject back to the table. It touches a lot of people."
Faced with disaster, the protagonist relies on his own originality to survive with each other.
The creators say that the Argentinians say “Atado Con Alambre” (broadly, “hold with wires”) is used to describe the creativity of those who have done little with it in a country that has experienced decades of military domination and economic crisis.
"It's a lot to be an Argentinian - to do everything possible to master your own limitations," said Martín Oesterheld. He not only mentioned the plot, but also when Miley launched a war against the swollen country in Argentina and cut funds to cultural programs like the National Film Academy.
“As our culture is funded, we bring this Argentine product to the world,” said Martín Oesterheld.
Against this backdrop, the show’s message of solidarity has gained a pressing new meaning, with Argentines furious at Miley’s liberal ideology, turning the series “no one alone gradually merged into a cry of a rally.
Retireds were protested during protests, a slogan that opposed the government's sharp pension cuts this month. To prevent police tear gas, some traded headscarves are gas masks used on the show to protect toxic snowfall.
"Today, a general policy, the state should not take care of its citizens, and it has to do with personal freedom," Darien said. But in many cases, if the state completely disappears, people will drift like they are sunk. ”
With the explosion of the Netflix series, Héctoroesterheld disappeared - Persons' flyer, his daughter and potential grandson popped up on the billboard in Buenos Aires, reminding people of the realistic horror stories behind the pulp adventure.
By 1976, when the military government came to power, Oesterheld, 58, had been known as the staunch leftist, whose four daughters ranged from 19 to 25, had joined a left-wing guerrilla force, and the entire family became the target of Latin America's deadliest dictatorship.
Oesterheld's two daughters became pregnant during the kidnapping. Until today, no one knows what happened to their unborn children, but they are believed to be one of the estimated 500 newborns snatched and handed over to a childless officer whose real identities have been deleted.
The three surviving members of the Oesterheld family never stopped searching. Martín Oesterheld's grandmother Elsa raised his mother after she was killed, accompanying other women who worked to find their missing grandson. They are known as the grandmother of Mayo Square.
Grandma captured the national interest of the TV series this month, offering a public appeal to the search for the disappearing grandson.
The reaction is overwhelming.
"It's incredible, it spreads. "Since this is science fiction on platforms like Netflix, we're reaching a house that my grandmother probably never had before. ”
Emails and calls have more questions than answers. Reaching out, hundreds of Argentine audiences are determined to find their missing relatives or suddenly doubt the legitimacy of their adoption.
“Eternaut is a living memory, a classic story passed down from generation to generation,” said Martín Oesterheld. “Get so many people accept it in this way…no greater social commentary.”
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