Warner Bros has picked up Argentine 2008 cult film Extraordinary Stories to stream on HBO Max. A restored version of the film, directed by Argentina, 1985 scriptwriter Mariano Llinás, is set to premiere  at the Buenos Aires Latin American Art Museum (MALBA) in August before landing on the platform with a slew of other recent Argentine films before the end of the year. 

An ambitious experiment in storytelling, Extraordinary Stories is a 4-hour film that stirred the local film community when it premiered in the 2008 Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI). At a time when the so-called New Argentine Cinema movement seemed to prioritize simple stories and austere production values, Extraordinary Stories surprised local audiences with a three-part mosaic of amazing tales about secret identities, lost treasures, exotic places, and dramatic love affairs. 

The film was also a novelty in terms of independent production, as it was mostly financed by the crew’s friends and family and without any state grants. 

“Its more or less obvious purpose was to spread the spirit of travel and cinema, conceiving them both as a single adventure,” Llinás said recently about the film. He went on to add that he was “proud” that the film had fulfilled its purpose since the moment it premiered and provided many viewers with an “excuse” to venture into film making. 

“It is our hope that this strange power remains intact in its now restored images. If so, its purpose, once again, would have been fulfilled,” he added. 

Originally shot in low-quality digital video, the film’s audio and images have been restored and improved by the Warner Bros Discovery team. This new updated version will play both at Malba and HBO Max. 

“For those of us who made the film, the formidable restoration carried out by HBO Max represent an opportunity to see with a new luster what, so many years later, continues to be one of the greatest adventures of our lives,” said Llinás, whose follow-up film, 2018 La Flor, has a runtime of 14 hours and took around ten years to make. 

His latest film, released this year, is a three-part hybrid documentary about world-renowned Argentine art-collective Mondongo, the original designers of the Extraordinary Stories poster.

More Argentine films on HBO Max

HBO Max also announced on Monday an acquisition deal with local distributor Cinetren to add four other Argentine films to the platform. They will all be available for streaming in the last quarter of 2025.

“This agreement reinforces HBO Max’s strategy of promoting national content, combining its own original productions with the acquisition of outstanding contemporary films and others that are already part of the history of Argentine cinema,” said Martín Crespo, VP of General Entertainment Content for the Southern Cone and Andean Region at Warner Bros Discovery.

Following a previous deal with Cinetren that included Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen and Benjamin Naishtat’s Rojo, this new batch of Argentine films includes three lauded recent  Argentine films and the 2002 classic Red Bear, a modern day western directed by Israel Adrián Caetano. 

One of the three movies is Javier Van de Couter’s Thesis on a Domestication, which premiered at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival and won a Gold Q-Hugo award for best LGBTQ film. The film is based on a novel by acclaimed Argentine trans author Camila Sosa Villada, who also adapted the script and starred in the film.

Cris Tapia Marchiori’s Gatillero (Gun Man) surprised audiences at the 2025 BAFICI with its one-shot gripping story of a former hit man who takes on an assignment that results in a breathless night of violence and betrayal in Isla Maciel, an under privileged area in Buenos Aires province.  

Now playing at MALBA, Ulises Rosell’s Presente continuo is an intimate exploration of an autistic teenager’s connection with those closes to him. The film, a winner of the Audience Award in the 2025 BAFICI, is played by Rosell’s son Lisandro and his real-life mother, actress Valentina Bassi.

Earlier this year, Warner had also acquired contemporary Argentine classics such as Damian Szifron’s Oscar-nominated Wild Tales, Daniel Burman’s Broken Embrace, and the late Fabián Bielinsky’s El aura and Nine Queens.