I am not Lorena

A wrong number leads to a case of mistaken identity, which leads to something much more sinister and bizarre, in I am not Lorena. Updating Kafka for the information age, Chilean filmmaker Isidora Marras spins an eerie web of debt collection, accidental impostors, and other shady goings-on in modern-day Santiago.

Actor Olivia (Loreto Aravena) is paying a visit to her mentally ailing mother when she gets a peculiar telephone call: a collection agency is looking for one "Lorena Ruiz," insisting that she pay her sizable — and significantly overdue — phone bill. Olivia maintains that they have the wrong number, and quickly hangs up. But when she begins to receive calls from other collection agencies, Olivia can do nothing to convince them that she is not Lorena Ruiz. A visit to one of the agencies only makes things worse, and the mysterious Lorena's problems start to bleed strangely into Olivia's financial and personal life, until even her family and friends grow suspicious of her. When a stranger calls her cellphone demanding a meeting with Lorena, Olivia determines to take matters into her own hands and track Lorena down, a decision that brings her into contact with the seedier side of Santiago culture.

Marras's feature debut explores the absurd reality of our digitally dependent society, where identities can be electronically created and dismantled ad nauseam, rendering us all economically and emotionally vulnerable. I am not Lorena cleverly pairs the perverse world of collection agencies in Latin America — ravenous bureaucratic monsters, plowing name by name through their enormous lists — with the underbelly of Chilean society, following Olivia's quest through the dark twin labyrinths of crime-ridden streets and digital bureaucracy.

DIANA SANCHEZ