# Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes
**Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes** (*Pizza, birra, faso*) is a 1998 Argentine crime drama film written and directed by Israel Adrián Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro, starring Héctor Anglada, Jorge Sesán, and Pamela Jordán. Set in the criminal underworld of Buenos Aires, it follows a group of impoverished teenagers who live by petty theft and graduate to planning their own robberies, incompetently. The film premiered at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival in November 1997 and opened in Argentine theaters on 15 January 1998, and it is widely regarded as the founding work of the New Argentine Cinema.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145393/releaseinfo/) • [2](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/pizza-beer-and-cigarettes/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | *Pizza, birra, faso*, literally "Pizza, beer and joint"; *faso* is Argentine slang for a cigarette or a joint[3](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/pizza-birra-faso/) |
| Directors and writers | Israel Adrián Caetano (Montevideo, 1969) and Bruno Stagnaro (Buenos Aires, 1973), both debut feature directors[4](https://www.sansebastianfestival.com/1998/sections_and_films/made_in_spanish/7/460072/in) |
| Release | Premiere at Mar del Plata Film Festival, November 1997; Argentine theatrical release 15 January 1998[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145393/releaseinfo/) |
| Runtime | Reported as 78, 80, 83, and 92 minutes by different festival and database sources[5](https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/16-torino-film-festival/film/pizza%2C-birra%2C-faso/1018/) • [4](https://www.sansebastianfestival.com/1998/sections_and_films/made_in_spanish/7/460072/in) • [6](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1998/films/pizza-birra-faso) |
| Principal cast | Héctor Anglada (Cordobés), Jorge Sesán (Pablo), Pamela Jordán (Sandra), Alejandro Pous (Megabom), Walter Díaz (Frula), Martín Adjemián (the taxi driver)[7](https://cineyseries.net/pelicula/Pizza-Beer-and-Cigarettes-39697) |
| Key crew | Cinematography Marcelo Lavintman; editing Andrés Tambornino; music Leo Sujatovich[4](https://www.sansebastianfestival.com/1998/sections_and_films/made_in_spanish/7/460072/in) |
| Production | Palo y a la Bolsa Cine, with support from the Hubert Bals Fund and the Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA)[8](https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt0145393/companycredits/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot and characters
Cordobés lives with his three friends, Frula, Megabom, and Pablo, in a squatted house in Buenos Aires, together with his pregnant girlfriend Sandra. The four survive by stealing, but they never act on their own account: they work for a small-time boss, in one arrangement robbing the passengers of a taxi whose driver is their accomplice, and he keeps most of the loot. Their guiding philosophy, as the festival synopsis puts it, is that as long as they have beer, pizza, and cigarettes, everything else is bearable.[9](https://mardelplatafilmfest.com/41/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Catalogo39MDPFF.pdf)
The turning point comes when Sandra confronts Cordobés about his responsibility for their coming child. Feeling he must make more important choices than pizza and beer, and lacking any chance of a real job, he decides to work independently: a big job, the theft of the takings of one of Buenos Aires' most popular nightclubs, is to be his passport to a new life in Uruguay with Sandra. The friends are amateurs, and things do not go as planned.[10](https://www.moviemeter.com/movies/drama/pizza-birra-faso) • [11](https://www.betaseries.com/film/96001-pizza-birra-faso) The Torino festival synopsis describes the film as "a story of obstructed love and lost ideals, of total loyalty and hope which, in the end, is reborn," in the directors' own declaration.[5](https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/16-torino-film-festival/film/pizza%2C-birra%2C-faso/1018/)
## Production and release
**From television to the big screen.** The film was shot with the expectation that it would end up on television. The critic Claudio España, a member of the [Mar del Plata](https://www.edgepedia.org/mar-del-plata) festival's selection team, was among the first to see its potential; he helped manage the process by which the INCAA provided the money that turned the finished material into a theatrical feature, according to cinematographer Marcelo Lavintman's recollection.[12](https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/cine/a-20-anos-pizza-birra-faso-recuerdo-nid2162599/) The production company was Palo y a la Bolsa Cine, with support from the Hubert Bals Fund of the [Rotterdam](https://www.edgepedia.org/rotterdam) festival and the INCAA.[8](https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt0145393/companycredits/)
After the November 1997 Mar del Plata premiere, the film opened in Argentina on 15 January 1998 and traveled to festivals including Fribourg (March 1998), [Montevideo](https://www.edgepedia.org/montevideo) (April 1998), [Karlovy Vary](https://www.edgepedia.org/karlovy-vary) (July 1998), Rotterdam, San Sebastián, Torino, Toulouse, and Gramado.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145393/releaseinfo/) For its 20th anniversary in 2018, a new 4K restoration was made from the original negative under the Plan Recuperar DAC/Gótika program, a joint initiative of CINAIN (the Cinematheque and National Image Archive of Argentina) and the DAC (Argentine Cinematographic Directors), supervised by Stagnaro, Caetano, and Lavintman; its world premiere screened at Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Neighboring Scenes" series.[2](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/pizza-beer-and-cigarettes/)
## Place in the New Argentine Cinema
The film is routinely identified as the founding work of the Nuevo Cine Argentino. According to the account repeated in scholarship, a New Argentine Cinema emerged at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in December 1997 with the presentation of *Pizza, birra, faso*; although it received no official awards there, it was highly acclaimed by the press and specialist critics.[13](https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781782046578_A42902352/preview-9781782046578_A42902352.pdf) The Film Society of Lincoln Center describes it as the milestone film that heralded the movement, one that fostered the careers of a generation of international filmmakers and fueled the Latin American cinema renaissance of the following two decades.[2](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/pizza-beer-and-cigarettes/) The Festival des 3 Continents ranks it, alongside Martín Rejtman's *Rapado*, among the films that most strongly influenced the movement both at the time and over the years.[3](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/pizza-birra-faso/)
Its distinctiveness lay in method as much as subject. The film modernized the image of marginalized youth by having the characters speak their own street language, and it portrayed them, in Claire Allouche's festival note, as more endearing than violent; it was praised for the liveliness of its dialogue and editing.[3](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/pizza-birra-faso/) Scholars have connected it to the movement's broader traits: films made independently on meager budgets amid the political and economic conditions of late 1990s Argentina, and a realism effect that implicates the viewer in constructing the film's meaning.[14](https://enlaotraisla.com/index.php/Laotraisla/article/download/30/73/) Jens Andermann's 2011 characterization of the movement, quoted in later scholarship, describes young independent filmmakers preoccupied with the national present at a time of crisis, often through neorealist chronicles of the social and geographical margins, with *Pizza, birra, faso* as one of its most emblematic pieces.[15](https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/992762/1/Serpe_PhD_F2023.pdf)
The film was also a commercial success in Argentina, and its critical and box-office performance had direct consequences for its makers: the production company Ideas del Sur hired Caetano and Stagnaro to bring the movement's spirit to television, producing the miniseries *Okupas* (2000), directed by Stagnaro, and *Tumberos* (2002), which Caetano worked on with a team that later created *El Marginal*.[15](https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/992762/1/Serpe_PhD_F2023.pdf)
## Reception and awards
At Mar del Plata in November 1997 the film made a strong impression on the FIPRESCI (international critics) jury and the ecumenical OCIC jury, though it took no official award there.[16](https://www.adorocinema.com/filmes/filme-51120/) • [13](https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781782046578_A42902352/preview-9781782046578_A42902352.pdf) In April 1999 it won four Silver Condor awards from the Argentine Film Critics Association: Best Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best First Film (opera prima), and Best New Actor for Héctor Anglada; Eduardo Mignogna took Best Director that year for *El faro*.[17](https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/pizza-birra-faso-y-premio-nid136540/)
## Legacy
Twenty-five years after its release, Argentine press retrospectives still treated the film as the founding statement of a new narrative current in national cinema, one that situated itself in small stories of miserable thieves at a moment when that reality was multiplying in the country.[18](https://www.lagaceta.com.ar/nota/amp/976904/espectaculos/hace-25-anos-pizza-birra-faso-afirmaba-cine-distinto.html) Academic work has continued to take it as a case study, whether for its staging of subaltern characters alongside Caetano's later *Bolivia* and *Los muertos*,[19](https://imagofagia.asaeca.org/index.php/imagofagia/pt_BR/article/view/577) for its melodramatic strategies within new Latin American realism,[20](https://revistaschilenas.uchile.cl/handle/2250/139526) or for its realist modes of representation.[21](https://enlaotraisla.com/index.php/Laotraisla/article/view/30) The 2018 restoration and anniversary screenings, and the 2021 re-release of Stagnaro's *Okupas* on Netflix, have kept the film and its offshoots in circulation.[2](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/pizza-beer-and-cigarettes/) • [15](https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/992762/1/Serpe_PhD_F2023.pdf)
## References
1. [Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes (1997) – Release info, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145393/releaseinfo/)
2. [Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes, Film Society of Lincoln Center](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/pizza-beer-and-cigarettes/)
3. [Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes, Festival des 3 Continents](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/pizza-birra-faso/)
4. [Pizza, birra, faso / Pizza, Beer, Smoke, San Sebastián Film Festival 1998](https://www.sansebastianfestival.com/1998/sections_and_films/made_in_spanish/7/460072/in)
5. [Pizza, birra, faso, film card, 16° Torino Film Festival](https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/16-torino-film-festival/film/pizza%2C-birra%2C-faso/1018/)
6. [Pizza, birra, faso, International Film Festival Rotterdam 1998](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1998/films/pizza-birra-faso)
7. [Pizza, birra, faso (1998), Cineyseries.net](https://cineyseries.net/pelicula/Pizza-Beer-and-Cigarettes-39697)
8. [Pizza, birra, faso (1997) – Companies, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt0145393/companycredits/)
9. [Pizza, birra, faso, Mar del Plata International Film Festival catalog](https://mardelplatafilmfest.com/41/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Catalogo39MDPFF.pdf)
10. [Pizza, Birra, Faso (1998), MovieMeter](https://www.moviemeter.com/movies/drama/pizza-birra-faso)
11. [Pizza, birra, faso, BetaSeries](https://www.betaseries.com/film/96001-pizza-birra-faso)
12. [A 20 años de Pizza, birra, faso, el recuerdo de sus protagonistas, LA NACION](https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/cine/a-20-anos-pizza-birra-faso-recuerdo-nid2162599/)
13. [Nation, Culture and Class (book preview on New Argentine Cinema)](https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781782046578_A42902352/preview-9781782046578_A42902352.pdf)
14. [Pizza, birra, faso, En la otra isla (article PDF)](https://enlaotraisla.com/index.php/Laotraisla/article/download/30/73/)
15. [Serpe, PhD thesis, Concordia University (on New Argentine Cinema and its television offshoots)](https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/992762/1/Serpe_PhD_F2023.pdf)
16. [Pizza, Cerveja, Cigarro, AdoroCinema](https://www.adorocinema.com/filmes/filme-51120/)
17. ["Pizza, birra, faso" y premio, LA NACION, 28 April 1999](https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/pizza-birra-faso-y-premio-nid136540/)
18. [Hace 25 años, "Pizza, birra, faso" afirmaba un cine distinto, La Gaceta, 16 January 2023](https://www.lagaceta.com.ar/nota/amp/976904/espectaculos/hace-25-anos-pizza-birra-faso-afirmaba-cine-distinto.html)
19. [Eljaiek-Rodríguez, Mira quién habla: Subalternos en tres películas del Nuevo Cine, Imagofagia](https://imagofagia.asaeca.org/index.php/imagofagia/pt_BR/article/view/577)
20. [Salinas-Muñoz and Stange-Marcus, Experiencing Latin American modernities, Revista Austral de Ciencias Sociales](https://revistaschilenas.uchile.cl/handle/2250/139526)
21. [Gutierrez, Pizza, Birra, Faso. Una fisura irreductible en los modos de representación del cine argentino, En la otra isla](https://enlaotraisla.com/index.php/Laotraisla/article/view/30)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1990s films › Crime dramas and gangster films*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license