In recent years, seized by the grip of an ongoing economic recession, Argentina defaulted on its debt payments and weathered two weeks of violent demonstrations that left 34 dead and prompted two appointed presidents and two interim presidents to step down. By late 2002, the peso had lost 70 percent of its value against the dollar and well over half the country lived below the poverty line, as rising unemployment, stagnant wages, and inflated prices on consumer goods deepened an already desperate situation. And yet, in relative terms, Argentina is still the land of plenty for Freddy Flores, the immigrant hero of Adrián Caetano's powerful Bolivia, a 75-minute slice-of-life that looks as if it were bankrolled by panhandlers. Shot in bits and pieces over three years, mainly in a single restaurant location, the film seems forced into a crude, black-and-white minimalism that actually works in its favor, adding a stark, documentary-like texture to a neo-neo-realist tale that's been told many times before. Perhaps because of the broken schedule, Bolivia lacks continuity in its storytelling and character sketches, closing with an abrupt flash of violence that doesn't square with the low-key observation that runs through much of the film. The 33-year-old Caetano is most assured when outlining Flores' mundane routine as a short-order cook in Buenos Aires, where his illegal status brings constant harassment from police and native Argentines, whose poor fortunes cause them to lash out at foreigners. With a wife and three kids thousands of miles away in Bolivia–he spends two-thirds of a day's wages on a five-minute call to them–Flores hopes to scrape together enough money to bring them to the city, but he can barely fend for himself. Both protective and exploitative, his boss (Enrique Liporace) takes advantage of the cheap labor, but also shelters his employees from the xenophobic clientele, who are eager to take their troubles out on Flores and Paraguayan waitress Rosa Sánchez. Caetano adds a few minor subplots, including a desperately bungled romantic encounter between Flores and Sánchez, but he's more concerned with the simmering tension in the restaurant itself, as economic hardships upset its once-congenial atmosphere. Though some characters are given to racial slurs and casual acts of violence, there are no villains in Bolivia, which has such a keen handle on the fraying social fabric that it treats everyone with at least a small measure of compassion. Caetano's blunt, deterministic ending underlines the point too neatly, but in dignifying an outcast whose life is treated as anonymous and disposable, he puts a human face on a national tragedy.