Man Facing Southeast (Spanish: Hombre mirando al sudeste) is a 1986 Argentine science fiction drama film written and directed by Eliseo Subiela, starring Lorenzo Quinteros and Hugo Soto.

[2] The themes and story of the 2001 American film K-PAX share a strong resemblance with Man Facing Southeast, and the former has been referenced or claimed as an uncredited remake of the latter.

[6] The staff and patients go about their daily business at Buenos Aires' José Borda Psychiatric Hospital on a summer day in 1985.

A staff psychiatrist, Dr. Julio Denis (Lorenzo Quinteros) is surprised to hear that his ward for non-violent delusional cases has one patient too many.

Summoning him (Hugo Soto) to his office, Denis finds the man's speech is measured and articulate as he explains his presence on Earth as a result of his image being projected from light years away.

Julio Denis is a highly professional, lonely man, whose recent divorce left him jaded towards his life and work.

Since his wife remarried, he settles for weekly outings with his two children and grainy home movies of happier times, which he views every night.

Believing that Rantés' claim of being a "projected hologram" is an allusion to Adolfo Bioy Casares' classic novel Morel's Invention, Dr. Denis concludes that this impressive genius is very well-read.

In narration, Dr. Denis claims that he appears to be the only physician who still notices the polite, unproblematic patient, but it's clear in a subsequent scene that he is not, since the doctor gets Rantés a job in the pathology department of the hospital.

He eventually persuades the conductor to let him take the baton for the symphony's iconic Ode to Joy, which confuses the musicians, leading to their refusing to play with him.

At the same time Denis, now filled with doubts and regrets about Rantés' life and his relationship with him, quietly waits for Beatriz, who is away indefinitely, to return to him.

[7] Little known outside Argentina, Man Facing Southeast received wider exposure upon the 2001 release of Universal Pictures' K-PAX, whose similarity to the Argentine title (whose author and director, Eliseo Subiela, was not credited) was unmistakable to film enthusiasts and critics, among them Robert Koehler of Variety and Bob Strauss of the Los Angeles Times, both of whom expressed surprise at K-PAX author Gene Brewer's contention that Man Facing Southeast was unfamiliar to him.

[8] The film was described by Mark R. Leeper as a combination of Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth and Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

[10] The 1993 American drama film Mr. Jones, directed by Mike Figgis and starring Richard Gere and Lena Olin, was partially inspired in Man Facing Southeast: in the film's story, Gere's character is a manic-depressive patient in a psychiatric institution, and in one scene the character abruptly jumps the stage at a classical music concert and conducts the orchestra.