Venice 2026: Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion (dir. María Aparicio) | Review

There’s something pleasantly contemplative about María Aparicio’s new film about cinema and labor, Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion. For starters, our two protagonists, Eva (Eva Bianco) and Dante (Roger Koza), wander through the aesthetic spaces of Madrid alone, admiring its geometric designs, prominent colors, naturally lit spaces, or simply walking around the city. Both from Argentinian, Eva, a filmmaker, with her ponderous facial expressions, roams around until Dante, a historian (and cinephile), approaches her because of his familiarity of her work. In a hilarious, clumsy introduction where awkward formalities ensue, Dante and Eva provide a breath of fresh air to each other, yearning for companionship in a large, but lonely city. But the film mutates into something grander, brilliantly experimenting with narrative structure to coalesce art and academia with the labor force.

The connective tissue for the curious narrative is Juan Bialet Massé, Spanish born, but also an Argentinian teacher and politician who spearheaded works on science, medicine, but for Dante’s researching purposes, labor. Through Bialet, Eva and Dante discuss the works and life of Bialet, drifting through museums, books, and visiting his hometown of Argentino. This commonality between Bialet and the two strike a contentious, yet thought-provoking discussion on their privilege and purpose as two Argentinians in Spain, concluding how learning about the past can inform the progressive change for the future, rather than staying stagnant in social movement.

Aparicio’s structure opens up the film’s thesis through the timeline of labor of Bialet’s past to the present day. Using the two as a gateway on how present-day labor practices affect workers, Aparicio separates them after a rich and empathetic fleeting interaction, having Eva return to Argentina and now following Dante continue his research, but now to a documentary approach. Blending these methods leave us with the thesis and reason for Dante’s purpose, rather than reading documents of accounts from Bialet’s reports, Dante adds onto the workers’ accounts in the 21^st century, where talking head interviews of several immigrants in Spain discuss their livelihoods. It’s another element of and also one of the more affecting segments of the film, where these first-hand accounts are no longer theorized, but spoken to us.

Speaking about Bialet and his writing about the 1920s, Bialet read in an advertisement to make your articles interesting with photographs. Maybe that dialectical understanding can open the film’s form to a better understanding. For advertisement, there’s text and image for it to persuade its audience, and for Dante and Eva, their common interests brought them together, but their perspectives on labor through their discussions evoke growth and empathy. And lastly, Aparicio’s use of fictional and non-fictional elements transports us to the sublime that only art can emit.

The 83rd edition of the Venice International Film Festival is running on September 2-12, 2026.