There are stories that spring from imagination. And there are others that you write because you need to find a way to live with what happened.
“Canelones,” the film starring Darío Barassi, Verónica Llinás, Agustín “Rada” Aristarán and César Bordón, belongs to that second group. And you can already watch it on Flow.
It is inspired by a real episode from the adolescence of Hernán Casciari: a phone prank that began as a cruel game and ended leaving an indelible mark.
“It was the first time I felt the evil inside my body,” the writer recalled when announcing the film’s premiere.
The Call That Changed Everything
Casciari was barely 15 or 16 years old and lived in Mercedes, a city in Buenos Aires province. Together with his friend Christian “Chiri” Basilis, he spent some afternoons playing phone pranks, a pastime common in a time without cell phones or social networks.
But one of those calls crossed a line. The teenagers contacted a woman, making her believe that Hernán was her son, whom she had not seen in nine years. Before hanging up, Casciari promised that he would visit her.
“In an hour I’ll be there, Mom. Prepare me canelones,” he told her. The guilt, as he would admit many years later, appeared even before the conversation ended. However, the true dimension of that call would be revealed much later.
The Tale That Brought the Past Back
Casciari turned the memory into a short story titled “Canelones.” In 2013 he read it aloud on “Perros de la Calle,” the radio program hosted by Andy Kusnetzoff. Among those listening was Daniel Olesnik, the son of the woman involved in the incident.
She had taken her own life a few months after the call. According to Casciari’s account, in her farewell letter she left a line addressed to her son: “I will never forgive you for making me cook and never coming.”
When he heard the story, Daniel recognized the town, his own name, and that dish that had forever become associated with his mother’s pain. He also recognized the author of the call.
Then, the story took an even more disturbing turn.
A Revenge Planned for Years
Daniel found Chichita, Casciari’s mother, on Facebook, who had just become a widow. He introduced himself as a man interested in buying a property she had for sale and began talking with her.
Over time, Chichita believed that a genuine emotional bond was forming between the two. But behind that closeness lay another purpose: to reach Hernán and Chiri in order to settle a debt from the past.
On October 15, 2015, Casciari returned to Mercedes for a reading of his stories. Daniel traveled from Patagonia and that night he met Chichita in person.
What happened during those hours is at the heart of the film: a nocturnal thriller threaded with kidnapping, guilt, fear, and an uncomfortable question about the possibility — or not — of repairing the harm caused. The film is presented as fiction inspired by real events, not as a documentary reconstruction.
Darío Barassi Portrays Hernán Casciari
In the film, Darío Barassi steps into Casciari’s shoes; Verónica Llinás plays his mother, Chichita; Agustín “Rada” Aristarán embodies Chiri and César Bordón takes on the role of Daniel, the man who returns to avenge his mother.
Also in the cast are Beatriz Spelzini, Belén Brito and Ernesto Claudio.
With a runtime of 91 minutes, “Canelones” blends dark comedy and thriller and concentrates its main action in a single night. It was directed by Christian “Chiri” Basilis —the same friend who participated in that teenage call— together with Ana Laura Gussoni.
Basilis’s involvement makes the project even more intimate: nearly four decades later, one of the real protagonists of that prank sat behind the camera to tell a story that had also weighed on his life for many years.
A Film Financed by Thousands of People
“Canelones” began life as a miniseries, but its production partners decided to transform it into a feature film. It was produced under the community model of Orsai Audiovisuales, with the participation of 5,495 people who funded the project.
The film was shot in Mercedes, the same town where it all began, and it premiered in Argentine cinemas on August 6, 2026. It was also acquired by Flow for its later arrival on the platform in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
When Literature Tries to Coexist with Guilt
For years, Chichita did not allow her son to publicly recount what happened that night in 2015. After the pandemic, something changed, and she finally agreed that the experience could become a film.
Thus, “Canelones” ended up closing a circle difficult to imagine: it was born in Mercedes, filmed in Mercedes, and brought together the two friends who had initiated the story almost forty years earlier.
But it is not only a film about a prank that went wrong. It is also a tale about what happens when a teenage act continues to grow in the memories of others. About the guilt that does not disappear, the pain that becomes an obsession, and literature as an attempt to stare straight at what cannot be changed anymore.
Because some stories do not find an ending. They merely find a new way to be told.
