Summary
In the ink-black Atlantic off Mar del Plata, a spectral German U-boat slips beneath moon-polished swells, her hull a riveted predator hungry for geopolitical chaos. Aboard, officers nurse a Machiavellian blueprint: obliterate the Argentine freighter S.S. Santa Fe, scatter her manganese cargo like metallic snow, and pin the carnage on Allied torpedoes—thereby luring neutral Buenos Aires into Fascist arms. Below deck, stokers shovel coal with the rhythmic fatalism of condemned metronomes; above, Captain-Lieutenant Klaus Reiter sketches penguins on a map, as if ornithology could atone for the massacre he is poised to unleash. When the fish-shaped torpedo bursts from tube four, its contrail of silver bubbles resembles a comet of treachery; seconds later the Santa Fe blooms into an orange chrysanthemum of fire, her lifeboats splintered matchwood among chorales of drowning sailors. Buenos Aires wakes to hysterical headlines, but a tenacious port-side telegrapher named Laura Vásquez intercepts a Morse fragment—“auf Deutsch”—and smells Reich treachery. With a deaf-mute stowaway, a disgraced naval architect, and a tango-bandoneón prodigy in tow, she races to the Patagonian ice fields where the U-boat hides inside a glacial cave lacquered like blue glass. There, in a cathedral of dripping stalactites, they confront not only the wolf-pack crew but Argentina’s own ruling syndicate of industrial barons who covet war profits. Reiter’s final gambit: scuttle his boat, erase every serial number, and vanish “sin dejar rastros”—without leaving traces—while Vásquez wields nitrate film reels as both evidence and flaming weapon. The showdown detonates celluloid history: the submarine’s iron phoenix consumed by its own torpedoes, the glacier calving like a wounded leviathan, and a single surviving canister of 35 mm footage bobbing in crimson meltwater—testimony that will either indict or immortalize the crime, depending on who reaches Buenos Aires first.
Synopsis
The true incident of the German U-Boat which torpedoed an Argentine ship to make Argentina declare war on the Allies.
Director
