This article examines the cross-fertilization between theatre and cinema in Mariano Pensotti's bold and innovative performance, Cineastas/Filmmakers (2013) . The multi-faceted and richy intertextual performance makes Cineastas a challenging work to decipher. This article places Pensotti's work within the established Argentine genre of 'biodrama', a concept developed by Argentine theatre practitioner, Vivi Tellas, in response to the 2001 crisis and its devastating aftermath. I argue that Pensotti builds on this concept, having participated in one of the early biodramas in Tellas's series, to explore how theatre should look beyond biodrama's desire the 'recover the real'. On first inspection, Cineastas would seem to be about authorship. Yet it is as much about spectatorship and how our experience as film spectators conditions the way in which we perceive our material surroundings. If there is a message to be read in the performance's hybrid medium of theatre, cinema and installation art, then it is about finding an adequate format in which to explore from behind the screens the way in which the cinematic self experiences urban surroundings.