Cinema halls – or dream palaces, as they’re affectionately called – offer a retreat into the realm of make-believe, and everyday drudgery is left at the door. Though set within a single-screen theatre in the Argentinian city of Córdoba, Ramiro Sonzini and Ezequiel Salinas’s hypnotic film invokes a more porous relationship between the screen and its audience. Here, the messiness of life beguilingly sneaks into this domain of fantasies, blurring the borders between public and private spaces.

While the luminous black-and-white cinematography lends a dreamy fuzziness to the images, the narrative concerns are grounded in thorny economic realities. A film projectionist at his local cinema called Pelu (Octavio Bertone) is reassigned to the post of a night watchman due to budget cuts at the city hall. The cinema soon becomes his literal refuge: he moves out of his cramped rented flat and secretly takes up occupation at his workplace. He then welcomes a horde of other outsiders, including his unemployed roommate, an ageing drifter and a sex worker who livestreams her erotic shows from the cinema. Every night, they watch classic films from the old masters – Jean Renoir, Yasujiro Ozu and Robert Bresson to name a few – until the early hours.

Despite these self-referential touches, the film steers clear of nostalgia; cinephilia is transformed into a force for public good, and a conduit to direct action. In the wake of Javier Milei’s election win in 2023, which ushered in a new era of far-right conservatism, Pelu and his friends’ radical acts of vandalism transform a commercialised space into a restorative commune. In an echo of classic westerns, there’s a galvanising scene where these wayward outcasts gather around a fire to exchange songs and stories. No longer tethered to flickering images on a silver screen, the flames of camaraderie are also alive beyond the frame.

• The Night Is Fading Away is at the ICA, London, from 23 October