The emergence of the audiovisual production model promoted by the Orsai Community, led by Hernán Casciari, has generated a (small) wave of immediate enthusiasm within the Argentine film ecosystem. The case of La muerte de un comediante, collectively financed by thousands of people, has been installed as an example of independence, speed, and creative freedom. But this romantic epic of self-financing has a less visible side: a discourse that reproduces, almost without filters, the same arguments that libertarian sectors and current government officials use to justify the dismantling of Argentina’s public film system. What is troubling is not only what Casciari says, but the kind of cultural legitimacy he has when he says it. Because he is not an outsider attacking the State from ignorance, but someone perceived as an ally of the cultural sector who nevertheless repeats the same reasoning as those who want to tear it down.

Casciari frames the issue with a simplicity that borders on the grotesque: “That’s how cinema is. That’s the problem with cinema. You can’t make a film without a daddy. ‘Hi dad, can I have some money?’ Well, here you go, says the State. Or you ask Netflix. ‘Hi new dad, can I have some money?’ ‘Yes, but I’m going to tell you what you have to say.’” (Retrieved from: https://www.bloomberglinea.com/2022/11/26/el-secreto-de-hernan-casciari-para-conseguir-us15m-para-el-peretti-project-en-5-meses/)  This paternalistic analogy of the State as a complacent and controlling provider is identical to the rhetorical repertoire used by those who want to shut down the INCAA. It reduces decades of public policy, support laws, grants, audits, and evaluation systems into a childish gesture: asking daddy for money. That conceptual framework implants a false and harmful idea: that the State “hands out” money, as if culture were not a right and a tool for social, educational, and symbolic development, among countless other things. Turning that caricature into a diagnosis is politically irresponsible, especially in a country where Javier Milei’s government is defunding institutions, firing workers, and paralyzing mechanisms that support cinema.

The problem becomes even clearer when Casciari states: “You have a State that gives money and makes creators lazy, because that’s what the INCAA does. It’s not that the INCAA is bad, the INCAA is fine, but around the INCAA a group of LAZY people form who make that their job. Pretending to make a film. It happens all the time.” Beyond the inexplicable contempt toward hundreds of workers, this sentence is even more disturbing because it is indistinguishable from the attacks made by Carlos Pirovano, the official appointed by Milei to carry out a brutal adjustment of the institute. If we posted that sentence on Instagram without attribution, the vast majority of the film community would assume it was said by Pirovano, not by Casciari. That coincidence is no accident: both reproduce the same prejudice, the same ignorance, the same fallacy. There is no data, no evidence, no serious research behind that accusation of “lazy people.” What does exist is ignorance, resentment, or the willingness to accommodate one’s narrative to an ideological trend that blames the State for all problems while erasing the social and cultural role of public investment. And meanwhile, his personal project continues to grow.

The most obvious contradiction is that while he criticizes the State for supposedly making creators “lazy,” the Orsai model benefits only those who already have a consolidated audience. It is not democratization: it is a form of internal market. Casciari can produce without State funds because he has a loyal community, accumulated symbolic capital, massive communication capacity, and an enterprise built around his own persona. His case cannot be extrapolated or replicated by a first-time filmmaker, by someone working in the provinces, by an experimental project, by a film without a fandom. Orsai does not open new doors: it opens one door for those who were already inside. And at the same time, it operates within an infrastructure that only exists because the State financed it for decades: technicians trained in public universities, audiovisual programs sustained by public institutions, theaters that survive thanks to State policies, regulatory frameworks built through collective agreements. There is no absolute independence from the State. What exists is a particular case presented as if it had emerged in a historical vacuum, when in reality it is the product of an ecosystem built collectively.

Casciari insists that his model liberates creators from rigid structures, but his own system reproduces a logic alarmingly similar to platform algorithms. He describes it himself: “At Orsai, decisions are made democratically through a collective production system in which associate producers vote on the different stages of the film. The associates have access to the project’s ‘backstage’ through platforms and an app where they can give their opinion and vote on creative decisions, the choice of actors, post-production, and even distribution.” The enthusiasm for this “creative democracy” hides a deep problem: creativity does not expand through mass consensus; it adjusts to an average. When thousands of people vote (La muerte de un comediante had more than 10,000 voters/partners/artists?), the result is not greater freedom but greater predictability. It is, essentially, a human algorithm. A human repetition of the same mechanism used by Netflix, Amazon or Disney to stabilize tastes, reduce risk, avoid uncomfortable areas, and bet only on what “works.” A cinema shaped by statistics is just as restrictive as one shaped by market logic. In both cases, the creator is subordinated to what the majority expects. Very little remains of the supposed freedom—what emerges is a kind of gentle obedience to the social algorithm.

In this context, the most damaging aspect is not the Orsai model itself—which can coexist perfectly well within a healthy system—but the way Casciari’s discourse becomes functional to those who wish to justify the dismantling of public cinema. The narrative of “you can make films without the State” now operates as a pretext for cultural defunding. Pirovano and Milei’s government can point to these isolated cases and say: “If they managed, why should we keep financing the rest?” This line of reasoning, as superficial as it is effective, turns Casciari into a spokesperson for austerity. Not because he intends to be one, but because his discourse fits perfectly into the political project that seeks to turn culture into merchandise, art into business, and public policy into an obstacle to eliminate.

Argentine cinema cannot survive without a State that sustains what the market will never sustain. All those films—the most fragile, the most necessary, the ones that expand the imagination—will not be financed by thousands of voters in an app or by followers of a media personality. And they will certainly not be financed by a market that invests only when profit is guaranteed. Enthusiasm for Orsai may be genuine, but turning it into a paradigm is a way of collaborating, even unintentionally, with those who want a country without cultural diversity, without public policy, and without institutions that guarantee rights. The problem is not that Casciari makes his films however he wants—that is perfectly reasonable. The problem is that his discourse, presented as creative innovation and boasting of an alleged absence of the State (which, as noted earlier, was more than present in the training of most of the technicians he relies on), ends up repeating the same arguments used by political power to justify the dismantling of Argentine cinema. And in times of systematic attacks on culture, that coincidence is not innocent—it is dangerous, and aligned.