“Boy meets girl” meets tragic political thriller in this drama set in Buenos Aires in 1979, three years into the “Dirty War” waged by Argentina’s right-wing military dictatorship against suspected ideological enemies. Horacio and Charo are Argentine leftists who return from exile in Cuba with Juan, their 12-year-old son, and Vicky, their baby daughter, and set about continuing their fight against the government. But being enemies of the state means they’ve got to assume false identities, so Juan becomes “Ernesto” at his neighborhood school. The film, the first feature by Benjamín Ávila, cuts between the revolutionary activities of Horacio, Charo, and Horacio’s brother Beto and the sweet, clumsy budding romance between Juan and Maria, a classmate’s sister. Based in part on Ávila’s own childhood (his mother, a Peronist guerilla herself, was disappeared in 1978), Clandestine Childhood sketches a picture of adolescence where “chicks” (as Juan’s Uncle Beto calls girls) and the police can appear equally terrifying—though ultimately, the cops are far more sinister and dangerous. The movie is intense, impressionistic, and emotional, but the raw personal feelings behind it sometimes muddle the narrative and character development. Still, as a glimpse of coming of age in a notorious moment of Latin American history, it’s well worth a look.