White Elephant

White Elephant (Elefante blanco, 2012) is Pablo Trapero's drama you can watch online on iFILM. It unfolds in a Buenos Aires shantytown, in the shadow of a vast unfinished hospital — the abandoned concrete hulk, a literal "white elephant," that gives the film its name.

Father Julián (Ricardo Darín) has spent years holding the parish together here: squeezing politicians for construction money, mediating feuds, burying the dead. He's joined by Nicolás (Jérémie Renier), a young Belgian priest who barely survived a massacre at his jungle mission and now doubts everything. With social worker Luciana (Martina Gusmán), they try to keep the neighborhood standing as a turf war between drug gangs flares and the authorities freeze the one project that gave people hope.

Trapero films the slum from the inside, in long roving takes, without posturing or pity. The story draws on the real Argentine priest Carlos Mugica, murdered for his work among the poor. A tough piece of social cinema anchored by one of Latin American film's finest actors. Stream White Elephant (2012) online on iFILM.