One of the first films released after the elections in 1983, Murder in the Senate is a "study of fascism...reminiscent in its power and style of Bertolucci's The Conformist." (Denis De La Roca) It centers on an historical incident in 1935, when a former police chief assassinated a senator-elect while attempting to shoot Lisandro de la Torre, a senator investigating government fraud. During a time of economic depression, the Minister of Agriculture had virtually signed over Argentina's meat production to British packing companies. De la Torre's idealism is contrasted with the assassin's narrow-mindedness; one believes in the purifying power of the truth, the other indulges his visions of grandeur, exercising his petty, yet deadly, power over family and associates. Director Juan José Jusid's choice of the economic and politically turbulent thirties, his focus on government corruption, and his psychological analysis of the authoritarian assassin had clear ramifications and parallels to contemporary Argentina. Kathy Geritz