At a half-empty screening of The Terminator, Bicho struggles to follow the time travel, and his old friend Vardemann tries to explain it. The joke has an edge. Vardemann has returned to Chivilcoy after years in prison, another friend is dying, and neither man can revisit the choice that separated them. An American blockbuster supplies a neat fantasy of repairing the past. Benjamín Naishtat lets that fantasy play on the screen while two Argentines sit with what cannot be repaired.
Glaxo moves between their reunion in 1984, the friends’ adolescence in 1957, and an earlier episode of police violence. Changes in aspect ratio distinguish the periods, but the film’s sharper transition is between kinds of story. The four boys at a town dance seem to belong to a coming-of-age melodrama; the arrest and execution of civilians belong to Argentina’s history of repression. Naishtat’s wager is that these stories occupy the same world. The man who passes between them is Ramón Folcada, a former police commissioner who has brought his younger wife, Miranda, to Chivilcoy.
Folcada’s past gives his small favors a threatening undertone. He recruits Miguelito, the shyest of the boys, to work with his horses, then holds out the prospect of a job at the Glaxo factory. Miguelito gains access to a household that fascinates his friends, particularly because of Miranda. Folcada, meanwhile, gains someone young enough to mistake attention for trust. Marcelo Subiotto plays him with a self-assurance that makes the arrangement plausible: Folcada need not announce a threat each time he asks for a favor. The earlier police scenes have already shown what can follow when people accept his authority.
His encounter with two Mormon missionaries brings the film’s foreign influences into sharper focus. Their awkward Spanish is funny until Folcada treats their visit as an affront. The scene puts two claims to moral certainty in one room, then reveals how little their positions resemble each other. The visitors can speak of salvation; Folcada can make people fear what he will do next. Naishtat finds a cruel comic rhythm there without asking the audience to forget the violence attached to this man.
The town itself is harder to read. Pedro Sotero’s rich color and the carefully staged dance make its social life inviting. Miranda’s arrival at that dance changes where the boys look, and Shigeru Umebayashi’s music gives her appearances a sweep borrowed from romantic cinema. Lali Espósito carries that attention with confidence. Yet Miranda is so often presented through the men watching her that the film sometimes grants their desire greater complexity than hers. Miguelito’s involvement with her becomes dangerous because Folcada can turn jealousy into a means of control. Their relationship needs enough life of its own to make the loss feel as powerful as the threat, and the film does not always give it that room.
The score exposes the same difficulty. Its lush phrases suit a story in which memory has enlarged youthful desire, and they help the film travel beyond the conventions of an Argentine historical drama. At moments, though, the music seems to supply an ardor that the scenes between Miranda and Miguelito have yet to establish. Naishtat can move confidently between noir suspicion, period romance, and black comedy. The shifts are less convincing when the romance must bear the weight of the tragedy to come.
Adapting Hernán Ronsino’s novel, Naishtat makes the movement through time relatively clear. That clarity lets us watch Folcada’s methods cross from state service into private life: he cultivates dependence, seeks information, and leaves younger people to carry the damage. It also reduces the force of the film’s central mystery. Vardemann’s imprisonment and Miguelito’s condition tell us early that the friendship will break. Once the danger in Folcada’s household is plain, some of the withholding feels like a wait for details rather than a growing uncertainty about the boys’ choices.
The title keeps one part of their future in view even during the film’s most nostalgic passages. Glaxo promises work in a town where Folcada can use that promise to draw Miguelito closer. By 1984, Miguelito’s failing health has made that prospect of security part of the injury he carries from those years.
Glaxo world-premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2026. Set in a small Argentine town anchored by a pharmaceutical factory, the drama follows four young men whose lives begin to unravel after a retired police officer and his alluring wife move into the community.
Full Credits
Title: Glaxo
Distributor: RT Features, Rei Pictures
Release date: September 11, 2026 (Toronto International Film Festival)
Director: Benjamín Naishtat
Writers: Benjamín Naishtat, Hernán Ronsino
Producers and Executive Producers: Rodrigo Teixeira, Berta Marchiori, Benjamin Domenech, Santiago Gallelli, Matias Roveda, Glauco Urbim, Marília Garske
Cast: Lali Espósito, Marcelo Subiotto, Esteban Lamothe, Esteban Bigliardi, Alan Sabbagh, Manu Fanego, Pablo Turturiello, Martin Armendariz
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Pedro Sotero
The Review
Glaxo
Benjamín Naishtat finds a powerful connection between Argentina’s history of repression and the bargains that undo four friends. The shifts in time, Folcada’s quiet coercion, and Chivilcoy’s inviting surfaces give Glaxo its force. Its romance cannot always sustain the score’s intensity, while an early sense of the tragedy weakens the mystery. Even so, the film is most affecting when a promised job becomes part of Miguelito’s lasting injury.
PROS
- Folcada’s menace grows from concrete acts of manipulation
- Strong visual movement between periods and genres
- The factory gives the friendship’s rupture a lasting cost
CONS
- Miranda has limited space beyond the men’s desire
- The score sometimes outruns the romance
- The mystery loses tension before its full disclosure
