Journal de Etica y Cine

Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

The Narrative of Dissensus: Approaches to Viejo calavera (2017) by Kiro Russo Based on a Reading of Jacques Rancière

Viejo calavera | Kiro Russo | 2017
Sebastian Morales Escoffier

Instituto de Investigaciones filosóficas - Universidad Mayor de San Andrés

Abstract

This essay offers a philosophical reading of the Bolivian film Viejo calavera (2017), directed by Kiro Russo, drawing on the conceptual framework of Jacques Rancière. It argues that the film is inscribed within the aesthetic regime of the image insofar as it articulates a form of aesthetic and political thought manifested through narrative dissensus, the construction of rarefied spaces, and the non-representative redistribution of the sonic field. To support this thesis, the analysis examines the narrative structure through the notions of deviation and curves, as well as the formal mechanisms that generate perplexity and silence. The study shows that Viejo calavera participates in a form of cinematic modernity in which politics does not operate as a message, but as a sensible interruption of the representative regime.

Keywords: Viejo calavera | Jacques Rancière | aesthetics | aesthetic regime | politics

This article is, for the time being, only available in Spanish: La narrativa del disenso: acercamientos a Viejo calavera (2017) de Kiro Russo en base a una lectura de Jacques Rancière

NOTAS

Cinema, Body, and Power. The Subaltern Subject in Prayers for the Stolen Noche de fuego | Tatiana Huezo | 2021 Juan Casas
We are the same human beings, but they were unlucky: The Ableist Gaze and the Rejection of Japanese Homogeneity in Kazuo Hara’s Sayonara CP Sayonara CP | Kazuo Hara | 1972 Rafael Méndez García
Confined Childhoods: Allegory and Subjectivation in Samira Makhmalbaf’s The Apple La manzana | Samira Makhmalbaf | 1998 Ndeni Esperanza Rojas Barragán
Pictures of reality in three Argentine underground fictions … (Puntos suspensivos) | Edgardo Cozarinsky | 1971 - La pieza de Franz | Alberto Fischerman | 1973 - La civilización está haciendo masa y no deja oír | Julio Ludueña | 1974 Enzo Moreira Facca
Bodies Turned into Weapons: An Ethical and Psychoanalytic Reading Weapons | Zach Cregger | 2025 Fernando González y Galán
When revenge is justified. Regarding Kill Bill: Hegel, the life-or-death struggle for recognition of the other, and Foucault’s power relations Kill Bill | Quentin Tarantino | 2003-2004 Sheila López-Pérez
Fractured Mirrors in an Overloaded World Postmodernist Cinematic Variables in the Representation of Climate Change Jesús Cendros GuaschPavel Cendros Parra
The search of meaning and cinema Close | Lukas Dhont | 2022 Felipe Arthur Muñoz Becerra
The desiring gaze and the enjoyment of madness: a psychoanalytic reading of feminine horror Pearl | Ti West | 2022 Yi Wang

Etica y Cine (Ethics & Films) is a Peer Reviewed Quarterly Journal Edited by
Department of Psychoanalysis and Department of Deontology, School of Psychology, National University of Cordoba, Argentina
Department of Psychology, Ethics and Human Rights, School of Psychology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
With the collaboration of:
Center for Medical Ethics (CME), Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway
Under the auspicious of:
The International Network of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics.

The Narrative of Dissensus: Approaches to Viejo calavera (2017) by Kiro Russo Based on a Reading of Jacques Rancière

Table of Contents