Argentine cinema has experienced a rebirth since the late 1990s, despite the country’s economic crisis. Buenos Aires, long a key setting for the nation’s fi lms, has not escaped the negative impact of the crisis, yet fi lm- making in the capital has thrived. This article explores the radically different presentation of the city since the fi rst explosion of fi lm in Argentina after the end of the military dictatorship of 1976 – 1983. It takes Luis Puenzo’s controversial La historia ofi cial as a starting point for a refl ection on the current presentation of Buenos Aires as a city plagued by fear in productions from the late 1990s to the early twenty- fi rst century.