Garage OlimpoMovies like Garage Olimpo
- Key Features:
- Political persecution, Torture, Military dictatorship, Human rights, Political activism, Oppression, Survival, Resistance, Abuse of power, Psychological manipulation, Argentina, 1970s, Political thriller, Social commentary, Violence-high, Cult classic
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Political thriller enthusiasts, Social justice advocates, Art house cinema lovers, History buffs
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Despair → Resilience
Garage Olimpo

Maria is a militant activist in an organisation opposed to the military dictatorship in Argentina. She teaches reading and writing in the shanty towns and lives with her mother in an old and run-down residence. One morning, Maria is carried off, in front of her mother, by a military squad dressed in civilian clothes. The young woman is taken to the Olimpo garage, one of the numerous torture chambers which haunt Buenos Aires to the general indifference of the population. In order to make Maria talk, Tigre, the head of the centre, gives her to one of his best men, Felix.
Garage Olimpo
Uruguay, 1973. Having been crushed by the military dictatorship, surviving members of the Tupamaro guerillas are imprisoned and tortured. They must find a way to endure the coming 12 years.

A young woman's desperate search for her abducted boyfriend draws her into the infamous Colonia Dignidad, a sect nobody ever escaped from.

Buenos Aires, Argentina. A luxurious van is parked on the sidewalk. A man enters with the purpose of stealing whatever he can find, but when he wants to leave, he cannot. The doors do not open, the control panel does not respond: the van has become an armored box and he is trapped like a mouse.

Juan lives in clandestinity. Just like his mum, his dad and his adored uncle Beto, outside his home he has another name. At school, Juan is known as Ernesto. And he meets María, who only has one name. Based on true events, set in the Argentina of 1979, this film is one about love.

Set during the unsettling disappearances in Buenos Aires during the dictatorship of the 1970s, the film involves theater director Carlos Rueda and his wife Cecilia. Shortly after Cecilia writes an editorial commentary questioning the mysterious abductions, she is herself abducted and taken into police custody.

Against the backdrop of a military dictatorship, Eugenia is reunited with her estranged family following her father’s stroke and is forced to confront dark secret.

Remo's self-destructive behavior overshadows his talent. Abril, an upcoming jockey, is pregnant with Remo's baby and has to decide between the child or continuing to race. They both race for Sirena, a businessman who saved Remo's life in the past but now is determined to find him, dead or alive.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1983. In the last and turbulent days of the military dictatorship, Alicia, a high school history teacher, begins to ask uncomfortable questions about the dark origins of Gaby, her adopted daughter.

In 1976, Argentina fell into the hands of a de facto government. Thousands of citizens are persecuted and kidnapped. This is the case of the parents of two children, who, knowing they are wanted, decide to hide.

The true story of four men who narrowly escaped death at the hands of Argentina's military death squads in 1977. Claudio Tamburrini is a goalie for a minor-league football team when he is abducted by members of the Argentine military police and taken to an unofficial detention center on the false suspicion that he is a terrorist. As he is tortured by intelligence agents looking for information he doesn't have, Tamburrini fully expects to be killed. After many sessions of brutal torture, Tamburrini and his fellow captives Guillermo and Tano are being readied for execution when, in a final desperate act, Tamburrini dives out a window during a rainstorm.

The Night of the Pencils was a series of kidnappings and forced disappearances, followed by the torture, rape, and murder of a number of young students during the last Argentine dictatorship (known as the National Reorganization Process). The kidnappings took place over the course of several days beginning on September 16, 1976.

In the 1980s, a team of lawyers takes on the heads of Argentina's bloody military dictatorship in a battle against odds and a race against time.

In 1970s Rome, a casual encounter between Enea and Pietro at a movie theater turns into an unforgettable romance — until destiny pulls them apart.

Using the interrogation of a US counterinsurgency agent as a backdrop, the film explores the consequences of the struggle between Uruguay's government and the leftist Tupamaro guerrillas.

A couple of friends work for a taxi driver to rob his passengers, but they feel like they're getting ripped off. They decide to plan their own robberies, but they are amateurs and things don't go too well. One of the youths, Cordoba, whose girlfriend Sandra is pregnant, just wants to get enough cash so they can leave Argentina and get to Uruguay to start a new life. He and his friends plan one last robbery, but things don't go as planned.

While returning to Leningrad from a visit to his brother, Professor Artyom's car breaks down and he finds assistance at an isolated farmhouse occupied by Alexey, his wife, a Vietnamese laborer, and a stranger who wanders around the farm. When his car is repaired, Artyom leaves, drunk on moonshine, and students Valera and Angelika arrive. After Valera gets drunk, the stranger abducts Angelika.

A woman married to a former politician during the 1971 military dictatorship in Brazil is forced to reinvent herself and chart a new course for her family after a violent and arbitrary act.

Irene is a magazine editor living under the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Francisco is a handsome photographer and he comes to Irene for a job. As a sympathizer with the underground resistance movement, Francisco opens her eyes and her heart to the atrocities being committed by the state.

It’s Friday night in Asunción and the temperature is 40ºC. Víctor, a 17-year-old wheelbarrow-boy, dreams of becoming famous and covets a cell phone in Mercado 4. He is offered the chance to deliver seven boxes with unknown contents in exchange for $100. This sounds like an easy job but it soon gets complicated. Something in the boxes is highly coveted. Víctor and his persecutors find themselves caught up in a crime they know nothing about.

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

Cielo is a mother whose teenage daughter is kidnapped in Northern Mexico. When the authorities offer no support in the search, Cielo takes matters into her own hands and transforms from housewife into a vengeful militant.

In Argentina, between 1982 and 1985, the Puccios, a well-established family of San Isidro, an upper-class suburb of Buenos Aires, kidnap several people and hold them as hostages for a ransom.

It’s 1948 and the Cold War has arrived in Chile. In the Congress, prominent Communist Senator and popular poet Pablo Neruda accuses the government of betraying the Party and is stripped of his parliamentary immunity by President González Videla. The Chief of Investigative Police instructs inspector Óscar Peluchonneau to arrest the poet. Neruda tries to escape from the country with his wife, the painter Delia del Carril, but they are forced to go underground.

After being released from a mental hospital, a troubled young man tracks down an actress he once had sex with and forces her into captivity, determined to make her part of his life.

In the 1980s, after a businessman is murdered at his home, an experienced police inspector and his rookie partner must delve into the gay scene of the city to catch the killer.

A small town in an Argentinian province, 1975. The life of Claudio, a successful lawyer, gets complicated when he has a stupid quarrel with a stranger in a crowded restaurant.

Patricia is a woman who was handed over as payment for her father's debt to the mafia. Her life takes a turn every moment, positioning her each time in a better rank within the mafia.

Mario and Ana, in voluntary exile from Buenos Aires, live in a remote Argentine valley with their 12-year-old son Ernesto. Mario runs a school and a wool cooperative; Ana, a doctor, heads a clinic with Nelda, a progressive nun. Into this idealistic family comes Hans, a jaded Spanish geological engineer -- surveying the land for the local patron, to see if it can be dammed for hydro-electric power, which would drive the peasants from the land into the cities.

Julia, a 25 year-old university student, two weeks pregnant, with no criminal record, is sent to prison. Julia murdered the father of her child. This story addresses maternity, jail and Justice; confinement, guilt and solitude; but above all it deals with Julia and her son, Tomas, born inside an Argentinean prison.

Paulete, the star of a daring theater group, is visited by his military brother-in-law, the young Fininha. A torrid relationship arises between the two, and now the soldier must deal with the prevailing repression during the Brazilian military dictatorship.

Covering the last years of the famous Brazilian fashion designer in her doomed quest for justice, Zuzu Angel follows the case of her activist son Stuart's arrest, torture, murder, and subsequent corpse disposal by the military forces in early 1970s Rio de Janeiro, during the darkest era of Brazilian military regime and media censorship.

During the last years of Pinochet's military regime, a group of militants from the "Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front" plan a prison break of political prisoners, through a tunnel that will take them 18 months to dig.

Former Colonel Fernandez is appointed Minister of the National Anti-Drug Agency (SENAD) and purges the special forces to fight the first of many battles against drug trafficking on the border of Paraguay and Argentina.

Colonia Helena, Argentina. The mysterious Tomás Kóblic, a former Navy pilot, works as a fumigator while dealing with his dark past and the intrigues of the corrupt police commissioner…

Four friends visit a rural locality of Chile, are brutally attacked by a man and his son. After not finding help in the town, they decide to confront these men with the help of a pair of policemen. But in this way, they will discover that their attackers have in their blood the direct legacy of the darkest period of Chilean history and will have to face the most brutal enemy.

The story of the tortuous struggle against the silence of the victims of the dictatorship imposed by General Franco after the victory of the rebel side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1975). In a democratic country, but still ideologically divided, the survivors seek justice as they organize the so-called “Argentinian lawsuit” and denounce the legally sanctioned pact of oblivion that intends to hide the crimes they were subjects of.

Patagonia, 1960. A German doctor meets an Argentinean family and follows them to a town where the family will be starting a new life. The family welcomes the doctor into their home and entrust their young daughter to his care, not knowing that he is one of the most dangerous criminals in the world.

An automotive highway is scheduled to be built through the territory of a garage cooperative. A special meeting of the cooperative takes place to reduce the number of garages. As all was already decided and arranged by the chairholder and the board, the decision passes easily at the meeting. But one unexpected event happens - the meeting room's entrance has been locked by an anonymous member and the key is missing...

At a summit for Latin American presidents in Chile where the region's geopolitical strategies and alliances are in discussion, Argentine president Hernán Blanco endures political and family drama that will force him to face his own demons.

After the coup d'État of the Democratic government of Allende, the embassy of Italy in Santiago played a major role in helping the opposers of the regime, and extradited many of them to Italy.

A concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them.

Sebastiano teaches high school gym classes and coaches swimming. He’s got a job, a girlfriend, and a pretty normal life. But as young Martin starts to infiltrate Sebastiano’s life, his world will get turned upside down. Eerie from the first frame, this Hitchcockian thriller portrays sexual obsession with terrifying realism.

A small village in Huelva, Andalusia, Spain, 1936. Higinio and Rosa have been married only for a few months when the Civil War breaks out. Higinio, being afraid of possible reprisals from the rebel faction, decides to use a hole dug in his own house as a temporary hideout.

When German police viciously quell a protest against the shah of Iran, popular journalist Ulrike Meinhof rebels against her dishonest marriage, walks away from her children and joins radical anarchist Andreas Baader. Together with Baader's girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, they form the violent Red Faction Army, and together perpetrate a slew of terrorist attacks as a way of disrupting the fabric of what they see as an increasingly fascist state.

19-year-old Argentine Martin has a nearly fatal drug overdose. After that, his mother sends him to Madrid, where his film director father (also Martin) lives with his new, much younger lover, Alicia, and bisexual actor friend, Dante.

Jorge is a writer for a left-leaning Buenos Aires magazine that's at odds with the country's military dictatorship. He meets lovely and intelligent actress Laura and begins an on-and-off romance that will continue for the next two decades. Fearful of commitment, Jorge initially moves on from her and his fortunes suffer, but the situation changes when he and Laura renew their acquaintance. Meanwhile, the country undergoes a political transformation.

After Chilean writer María Carolina Geel murders her lover, the case captivates shy legal secretary Mercedes, sparking a connection between the two women.

Maria finds herself caught between two worlds. At school this 14-year-old girl has all the typical teenage interests, but when she’s at home with her family she follows the teachings of the Society of St. Paul and their traditionalist interpretation of Catholicism. Everything that Maria thinks and does must be examined before God. And since the Lord is a strict shepherd, she lives in constant fear of committing some misconduct...

A political activist is convinced that her guest is a man who once tortured her for the government.

Based upon the true story of Olga Benário, the German-born wife of Brazilian communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes. During the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945) she was arrested and sent to Nazi Germany, where she was put to death in a concentration camp. After World War II began, Vargas decided to uphold the Allies.

Deep within Buenos Aires's labyrinthine subway system, a train mysteriously disappears along with its 30 passengers. The subway officials are greatly troubled and call in topographer Daniel Pratt to help them find it. Unfortunately, the tunnels are so vast and complex, that Pratt needs his mentor Hugo Mistein to help him. Unfortunately, he has vanished too.

Determined to survive at any price, Edith, a young Jewish woman deported to an extermination camp, manages to survive by accepting the role of kapo, a privileged prisoner whose mission is to ruthlessly guard other prisoners.

Set during the height of Spanish Inquisition. The beautiful and kind-hearted Maria is arrested as a witch when she inadvertently cries out in horror at the public whipping of a child. As Maria’s husband Antonio tries to save her, Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, determines to punish Maria with torture for the desire she inflames in him. Loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story.

Laura and her father Wilson arrive at a cottage off the beaten path in order to repair it since its owner will soon put the house on sale. They will spend the night there in order to start the repairs the following morning. Everything seems to go on smoothly until Laura hears a sound that comes from outside and gets louder and louder in the upper floor of the house. Wilson goes up to see what is going on while she remains downstairs on her own waiting for her father to come down. The plot is based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. La casa muda focuses on the last seventy eight minutes, second by second, as Laura tries to leave the house unharmed and discovers the dark secret it hides.

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

Rosario Tijeras has been abused by men all her life, initially by her stepfather. Years later, she works as a paid assassin, seducing men and killing them when they least expect it. She meets Emilio, a wealthy womanizer, and his best friend, Antonio, at a nightclub, and starts an affair with Emilio despite Antonio's growing feelings for her. But circumstances bring her closer to Antonio, until her past catches up with her in a devastating way.

In Stalinist Poland, cabaret singer Tonia decides to spend the evening drinking with a group of friends. The next morning, she awakes to find that, for reasons unknown to her, she has been jailed as a political prisoner. As prison officials interrogate, torture and humiliate her, she fights for survival and to maintain her innocence by refusing to sign a false confession. As her years of imprisonment pass, her relationship with her captors grows more complicated.

Female prisoners endure the horrors of drug abuse, prostitution and rampant sadism at an island prison. When an escape attempt goes awry, the fugitives discover that escaping can be as dangerous as remaining in the prison.

A mysterious teenager named Ángelo cares for Klaus, a German doctor with a dark past who lives trapped in an iron lung.

Carlos, a ruthless Spanish negotiation expert working in Brussels, is tasked with handling the kidnapping of a senior oil company executive in a troubled West African country —with which he has old and deep ties—, torn by ethnic tensions and government abuses.

A radio-show assistant meets a budding screenwriter during a group-therapy session for sex addicts.

Kitty runs a brothel in Nazi Germany where the soldiers come to "relax". Recording devices have been installed in each room by a power hungry army official who plans to use the information to blackmail Hitler and gain power himself. A girl named Margherita discovers the little ploy and with Kitty's help plans to take on the dangerous task of exposing the conspiracy.

Sosa is a lawyer who haunts hospital waiting rooms hoping to represent the victims of traffic accidents in insurance claims. When he falls in love with ambulance medic Luján, he tries to leave this dark business but the shady law firm that he works for won’t let him off that easily.

Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and came back to it in 1981, looking for the same places and people, showing what had ocurred since then, and trying to gather a family whose patriarch, a political leader fighting for rights of country people, had been murdered.

The story of two radically different men thrown together in a Latin American prison cell. One is Valentin, a journalist being tortured for his political beliefs. The other is Molina, a gay window-dresser who fills their lonely nights by spinning romantic fantasies drawn from memories of old movies.

A deeply disturbed and epileptic young man benignly decides to murder other members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.

Police commissioner Funes and three researchers of supernatural phenomena investigate inexplicable events that are occurring in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

In 1977 Recife, Marcelo, a technology expert in his early forties, returns in the midst of Carnaval to reunite with his son and plot a dangerous escape under the ever-watchful eyes of Brazil’s repressive military regime.

Residents of an enclosed neighborhood in the middle of Mexico DF are shocked by a violent crime, and for one resident in particular, young Alejandro, the drama is ratcheted up when he encounters the lone kid who escaped the event and is hiding out within the neighborhood's borders.

An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.

A pawn shop proprietor buys used goods from desperate locals – as much to play perverse power games as for his own livelihood, but when the perfect rump and a backed-up toilet enter his life, he loses all control.

A young actress rehearsing for a play about human trafficking begins to relive terrifying scenes that may be dreams -- or an alternate reality.

In 2013, in Cairo, a tragic fate brings together several detainees from different political and social backgrounds inside a police truck, during the turmoil that followed the ousting of president Morsi.

Fernando is on holiday with his closest male friends in a beautiful country house in a suburb of Buenos Aires. On their own without their girlfriends in a “men only” environment, the hunky young studs bask in the hot sun, play in the pool, smoke pot, and drink, most often semi-clad or naked. In this freewheeling and testosterone-infused environment, they talk of their desires and strengthen their individual bonds.

Paulina is a young lawyer with a promising career in Buenos Aires, who chooses to go back to her home town. Her father, Fernando, is a well known judge. Against his will, Paulina decides to teach in a suburban high school as part of an inclusion program. One night, after the second week working there, she's brutally assaulted by a gang. With the disapproval of the people around her, she decides to go back to work, in the neighborhood where she was attacked, without realizing that her attackers may be even closer than she thought.

A young man returns to his countryside hometown to investigate the unclear circumstances behind the death of his father, ostensibly killed by Fascists in 1936, before his birth. As he unravels a web of lies that seems to encompass the whole town, he finds himself entangled in the same web.

A woman from the country moves into to the big city of Buenos Aires to start a new life. Things are not going very easy and she soon finds herself working as a prostitute.

Lalo is a teenager tormented by the recent death of his dad, and being forced to move to an old house with his grandmother Elena. After taking his dad's old wristwatch, the ghost of a young girl begins to haunt him. Now, Lalo's life is in danger as he tries to unfold the mysterious ghost who keeps frightening him, hoping to stop her from dragging him for good.

One of the most controversial cases in recent years in Argentina, this movie is based on the true story of Nahir Galarza and the murder of her boyfriend that rocked the country. The youngest woman to be convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Argentina, but questions still remain- was this a crime of passion, or is the truth still yet to be fully discovered?

A middle-class Black family in Brazil copes with the election of a far-right extremist president. The mother believes that she's cursed after an unexpected encounter, while her husband puts all of his hopes into their son's soccer career.

Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.

Amid the sweltering summer heat in northern Argentina, two middle-class families retreat to a crumbling country estate and a modest townhouse, where strained relationships, simmering tensions, and the presence of children and servants quietly expose the fractures of family life. Between idle days, gossip, and unspoken desires, the boundaries of class, tradition, and faith are reflected in their everyday interactions.

Among gunshots and boleros, a passionate relationship flourishes between a lonely transvestite and a young guerrilla during the Pinochet dictatorship.

In the near future, a popular uprising in Mexico City interrupts a wedding held at the home of a wealthy family. After the riots have been quashed, they discover the bride has gone missing and plea with the military to help locate her.

Emanuelle is framed by a corrupt D.A. while investigating a drug smuggling operation and has to tough it out under lock and key, dealing with a strict warden and abusive guards.

An experienced commercial pilot is forced to collaborate with his country's intelligence services to avoid being punished for a serious fault he committed on the job. He is quickly plunged into an underworld of intrigue and extortion that will put his life at risk and he will pay a very high price to escape from it.

Vahid, an Azerbaijani auto mechanic, was once imprisoned by Iranian authorities. During his sentence, he was interrogated blindfolded. One day, a man named Eqbal enters his workshop. His prosthetic leg creaks, and Vahid thinks he recognizes one of his former torturers.

Simón, a Venezuelan freedom fighter exiled in Miami, copes not only with trauma, but also deep guilt over a choice he must make: stay in Miami and start a new life, or return home to the losing fight against a tyrannical regime.

In the late 19th century, a former high school teacher turned unionist tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a textile factory in Turin, Italy.

Jota's suicide attempt is interrupted when a motorcyclist crashes off a bridge. After he rescues her, he decides to invent a life story for her — one of love and shared memories — creating a fragile web of deception that intertwines their fates.

While searching for a solution to his serious health condition, David, a renowned neurosurgeon, discovers a sinister secret hidden in the past.

Don Poli, the patriarch of a family embedded in politics, faces the change of party in his state - after a hundred years in power - losing all his privileges. Humiliated and angry, he threatens to disinherit his family and leave to rebuild his life. This forces his children (Kippy, Ramses and Belén) to take extreme measures to ensure their future, causing everything that could go wrong to turn out worse.

Raquel has been the live-in housekeeper for a kind, reasonably wealthy family for half her life, and the joyless repetition of the job has begun to take its toll. Increasingly dependent on painkillers, Raquel resorts to pranks and childish avoidance to antagonize the family’s college-age daughter and a procession of new servants, all in the hopes of protecting her precarious power within the home. Her antics successfully push everyone away, until new maid Lucy actually pushes back.

A conflicted youth confesses to crimes he didn't commit while a man and woman aroused by death become obsessed with each other.

Afro-Brazilian poet and politician, the legendary Carlos Marighella. Driven to fight against the erosion of civil and human rights following the CIA-backed military coup of 1964 and the brutal, racist right-wing dictatorship that followed, the revolutionary leaves behind his wife and son to take up arms, becoming a notorious enemy to the power structure.

The Square looks at the hard realities faced day-to-day by people working to build Egypt’s new democracy. Cairo’s Tahrir Square is the heart and soul of the film, which follows several young activists. Armed with values, determination, music, humor, an abundance of social media, and sheer obstinacy, they know that the thorny path to democracy only began with Hosni Mubarak’s fall. The life-and-death struggle between the people and the power of the state is still playing out.

A group of patients meet at a prestigious psychologist's office. Apart from the day and time of the appointment, something else unites them all: all six suffer from OCD. But the plane bringing the doctor is unexpectedly delayed, which forces them to spend an endless wait until the doctor shows up. Will they be able to keep their manias, impulses, convulsions, obsessions and rituals at bay during the wait?

In postwar Rome, a working-class woman dreams of a better future for herself and her daughter while facing abuse at the hands of her domineering husband. When a mysterious letter arrives, she discovers the courage to change the circumstances of her life.
