Apartment Zero, also known as Conviviendo con la muerte (Spanish for Living with Death),[2] is a 1988 British-Argentine[2] psychological-political thriller film directed by Argentine-born screenwriter Martin Donovan, co-written by Donovan and David Koepp and starring Hart Bochner and Colin Firth.

The story is set in a rundown area of Buenos Aires at the dawn of the 1980s, where Adrian LeDuc becomes friends with Jack Carney, an American expatriate who rents a room from him.

Gradually, Adrian begins to suspect that the outwardly likeable Jack is responsible for a series of political assassinations that are rocking the city.

Famously suffused with homoerotic overtones and moments of black comedy,[3] it received mixed-to-positive reviews at the time of its release, and currently has a Rotten Tomatoes' score of 75% positive reactions from both critics and viewers.

After several unsatisfactory applicants, he meets American Jack Carney (Bochner), who agrees to take the room.

Despite Adrian's jealousy, Jack continues to socialize with several of them, becoming sexually involved with Laura, whose husband is frequently away.

Claudia, the ticket seller at Adrian's cinema, is involved with a political committee investigating a series of murders that bear a striking resemblance to those committed by members of death squads that operated in Argentina during its last civil-military dictatorship (1976–1983).

Though he's personally apolitical, Adrian allows Claudia's committee to use his theatre to view footage of death squad members.

As Adrian attends his mother's funeral, Claudia comes to the apartment and recognizes Jack from the death squad photos.

The main events transpire shortly after the end of Argentina's last civil-military dictatorship (1976-1983); the regime (self-titled as National Reorganization Process) imposed a political climate of state-sponsored terrorism, and the period was marred by widespread human rights violations.

[11][12] The state-sponsored terrorism of the military Junta created a climate of violence whose victims were in the thousands and included left-wing activists and militants, intellectuals and artists, trade unionists, High School and College/University students and journalists, as well as Marxists, Peronist guerrillas or alleged sympathizers of both.

[18] Present estimates for the number of people who were killed or disappeared range from 9,089 to over 30,000;[19][20] The military themselves reported killing 22,000 people in a 1978 communication to Chilean Intelligence,[21] and the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which are the most important Human-Rights Organisations in Argentina, have always jointly maintained that the number of disappeared is unequivocally 30,000.

[citation needed] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "hilariously awful", and stated, "A good deal of money has been spent on this nonsense, which was shot in Buenos Aires in English.

"[25] Kevin Thomas's review in the Los Angeles Times lead with "Zero Doesn't Add Up as a Thriller", adding "Nothing, however, makes much sense right from the start.