27 nights – LeerCine

27 nights (2025) is a film directed and starring Daniel Hendler, one of the most prolific and talented actors of the last decades of Argentine cinema. The story it tells is that of Martha Hoffman (Marilú Marini), an eccentric and wealthy octogenarian who is unexpectedly admitted to a psychiatric clinic by her two daughters due to supposed dementia. From this, judicial expert Leandro Casares (Daniel Hendler) is summoned to intervene, who must investigate and determine if Marta really suffers from dementia and should be hospitalized or if she is well and can live the last years of her life freely.

This bittersweet comedy has all the ingredients of a classic film, one of those formulaic feature films that work without a problem and do not fail in their simple but happy objective. If it were a North American film – I wouldn’t be surprised if there were one or more remakes in the future – it would be a commercial film, but being Argentina it premiered at a film festival, something it only needs because of its Latin American status. The leading duo is perfect, both for the characters and their performers. Martha is an older woman, with a bohemian and artistic past, leading a free life that she sought to recover after her widowhood, which puts the inheritance of her two daughters at risk. Leandro is a textbook loser, he lives with his father and each case takes him more time than it should. Single and stuffy, his life will change when he meets Martha. She, of course, will see in him the only person she can trust.

27 nights is based on a novel twenty seven nights by Natalia Zito, which in turn is inspired by the true story of the plastic artist Natalia Kohen, hospitalized in 2005, a case that became more media-friendly because it involved the neurologist, media figure, entrepreneur and popularizer of some fame in Argentina who later launched a career in the field of politics. Facundo Manes diagnosed the plastic artist and writer with Pick’s disease (a form of dementia), a diagnosis that allowed Kohen’s daughters to file an insanity lawsuit against her. In the novel and the film the names were changed and the story takes many other liberties for the sake of cinema. The script is by Daniel Hendler, Martín Mauregui and Agustina Liendo based on an adaptation by Mariano Llinás.

Daniel Hendler is the most lovable actor of his generation, his friendliness and natural clumsiness make him adorable for viewers, especially when he does comedy. Here he does not disappoint and the film is an extension of his acting characteristics. Marilú Marini has the same naturalness, as does almost the entire cast. The film does not cling so much to the denunciation of real life but to something much more universal, the right of a person of eighty or older to do what they want with their life and their money. The protagonist is a free spirit and her circumstantial enemies fight against that. Yes, sometimes there are dark interests, but sometimes simply the inability to allow an older person to be free until the end. Impossible not to get attached to 27 nights precisely for that reason.