Martín is a 1997 Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 and Argentine

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 directed by Adolfo Aristarain

Adolfo Aristarain

Adolfo Aristarain is an Argentine film director whom Variety has deemed a "master filmmaker."After leaving Argentina Aristarain started working as assistant director in the Arcente cinema, and then in Europe during his short exile for Mario Camus, Giorgio Stegani and Lewis Gilbert before...

 and starring Federico Luppi, Juan Diego Botto

Juan Diego Botto

Juan Diego Botto-Rota is an Argentine-Spanish actor.Botto's father disappeared during the Argentine Dirty War when Juan Diego was only two years old...

, Cecilia Roth

Cecilia Roth

Cecilia Roth is an Argentine actress.Her father, Abrasha Rotenberg , a Jewish immigrant from the Soviet Ukraine, is an editor and a journalist. He met Cecilia's mother, an Argentinian singer of Sephardic descent Dina Rot, in Argentina. Cecilia Roth has made appearances in numerous television series...

 and Eusebio Poncela

Eusebio Poncela

Eusebio Poncela is a Spanish actor.His debut on stage was with the Federico Garcia Lorca play Mariana Pineda....

.

It was nominated for four Goya Awards

Goya Awards

The Goya Awards, known in Spanish as los Premios Goya, are Spain's main national film awards, considered by many in Spain, and internationally, to be the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards....

 in 1998, and Cecilia Roth won one for lead actress.

It was filmed in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, Argentina; Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, and Almería

Almería

Almería is a city in Andalusia, Spain, on the Mediterranean Sea. It is the capital of the province of the same name.-Toponym:Tradition says that the name Almería stems from the Arabic المرية Al-Mariyya: "The Mirror", comparing it to "The Mirror of the Sea"...

, Spain.

Plot summary

Martín, known as Hache, is a 19-year-old Argentinian boy who after his girlfriend leaves him has a nearly fatal drug overdose

Drug overdose

The term drug overdose describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced...

, thought by many to be an attempted suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

. Afterwards, his mother sends him to Madrid to live with his father, Martin.

Martin, a successful film-maker, doesn't want to take care of his son because he likes living alone and being able to socialize with his two friends, Alicia and Dante, without influencing his son in any negative way since both Alicia and Dante are experienced drug users. Regardless, he brings him into his home, hoping to ward off any evil influences that might cause his son to have a relapse and commit suicide.

As time passes and Martin's friendships get more strained, it becomes clear that Hache needs to leave his father's place and make a name for himself.

Background

The title makes reference to the name of the son of Martín, portrayed by Juan Diego Botto, who is named after his father but with an "h" in brackets, which means "hijo" ("hijo" means "son" in Spanish, and "hache" is the Spanish name for the letter "h"). So nearly everybody calls him "Hache." It is similar to calling a son named for his father "Junior" in English. The movie's English subtitles translate "Hache" as "Jay," since "jay" is the English name for the first letter in "junior" and is also a common English given name.