Summary:
On the fringes is the directorial debut of Juan Diego Botto, a filmmaker born in Buenos Aires who has spent most of his life in Madrid since childhood. Botto brings a seasoned sensibility to the project, drawing on a robust body of work as an actor that spans more than fifty titles and appearances on stage, screen, and television. His filmography includes notable projects that earned him recognition in his native country and beyond, such as Historias Del Kronen, which earned him a Goya nomination, Vete de mí, another Goya-nominated performance, and a diverse array of projects like Dance Steps, Anything You Want, Europeans, and Good Behavior. These credits establish a backdrop of experience that informs the film’s pacing, tone, and emotional precision.
The story centers on the intimate consequences of a sudden, severe external crisis and how it reverberates through intimate relationships. It asks a fundamental question: How can an economic upheaval redefine bonds within couples and reshape connections between parents and children? The narrative also foregrounds the role of women as steadying forces within the family unit, examining how their support and strategies for care influence the emotional climate at home during times of stress. The film tracks the way fear, uncertainty, and responsibility unfold under pressure and invites viewers to witness the multiple, often divergent, reactions that people exhibit when their sense of financial stability is stripped away.
At its core, the project concentrates on a single day in the lives of three diverse characters who navigates the same harsh reality from different angles. Each figure faces eviction in one form or another, and all are pressed into a 24-hour window in which decisions must be made that will leave an indelible mark on their futures. The tension comes not from grand gestures but from the precise, human moments—the looks, the choices, and the conversations—that reveal how people recalibrate their lives when the ground shifts beneath them. The film uses this shared crisis to explore themes of resilience, vulnerability, and the quiet economies of care that people extend to one another when resources vanish.
In Botto’s hands, the material becomes a portrait of ordinary people facing extraordinary pressure. The director’s perspective—shaped by decades of acting and storytelling—offers a nuanced treatment of family dynamics, social pressure, and the moral complexities that arise when survival instincts clash with long-held values. The performances, supported by a tightly wound script and an atmosphere of realism, invite audiences to reflect on the costs of economic precarity and the small, human acts that sustain relationships under strain. While the focus remains on the personal dramas, the film also speaks to a broader societal condition, one where economic insecurity can erode or reinforce bonds in surprising, sometimes paradoxical ways. The result is a drama that feels both intimate and inherently relevant, a cinematic examination of what people will do for love and what love requires when the stakes are highest. Throughout this intimate period, audience members are invited to consider their own responses to crisis, and to contemplate the ways in which time—just 24 hours—can redefine a family’s future and a person’s sense of self. (Source: filmography and press materials related to actor-director Juan Diego Botto)