27 Nights Ending Explained: Was Martha Really Facing Dementia—or a Deeper Deception?
Argentine psychological drama 27 Nights traps viewers in uncertainty as 83-year-old rich widow Martha Hoffman is committed by her daughters on claims of frontotemporal dementia, while Daniel Hendler’s Leandro Casares circles an answer that never comes—raising a chilling question: is she sick, or being silenced?
File this under: movies that pretend to be one thing but are really about something else. 27 Nights looks like a medical mystery, but it is really a story about control, money, and an 83-year-old refusing to go quietly.
The setup
We meet Martha Hoffman, a wildly wealthy widow who likes booze, parties, and sex with whoever she feels like. Her daughters, Myriam and Olga, get her locked in a psychiatric facility claiming she has frontotemporal dementia. Leandro Casares (Daniel Hendler) is brought in to evaluate her. His assessment never actually lands anywhere definite, which is kind of the point.
Does she actually have dementia?
The movie basically nudges you to answer: probably not. Martha comes across less confused than just defiantly alive. She gives away her stuff on whims, surrounds herself with much younger, eccentric friends, and chases pleasure because she wants to. Maybe irresponsible, definitely provocative — but not incoherent.
So why the accusation?
From the daughters' side, Martha keeps handing out valuables and backing big-money 'investments' that sound like scams. They insist her friends are leeches using her for cash. Whether you buy their concern or not, the result is the same: they move to take control and commit her.
Based on a real case
The story loosely riffs on the case of Natalia Kohen, an elderly artist who was declared incompetent by her daughters, institutionalized, then later deemed mentally fit and released. Knowing that gives the film an extra sting.
Casares pulls on the thread
As Casares digs into Martha's medical file, he finds a red flag: the dementia diagnosis by Dr. Orlando Narvaja looks like it may have been fabricated or rubber-stamped by the same examiner involved in getting her admitted in the first place. Translation: the paperwork that justified locking her up might be bogus.
The endgame
Casares never finishes his evaluation. He helps Martha slip out from the home confinement she lands in afterward, and that one rebellious move gets his work tossed. The court also discards Narvaja's reports. Then comes the compromise: Martha and her daughters settle.
The terms are a gut punch if you were rooting for total independence, but they also tell you exactly what this fight was about:
- Martha is declared not autonomous. She cannot sell or mortgage her assets.
- She cannot buy new property, establish companies, or sign any agreements.
- She cannot marry or leave the country.
- For any of the above, she needs permission from her daughters.
All of her capital and goods go under a trustee. After an agreement between mother and daughters, Casandro is appointed as the trustee. And then the kicker: the film reveals Martha lives to 104, still doing things her way within those guardrails — free and eccentric as ever. The ending lands as both sharp and perversely satisfying, forcing you to think about where protection ends and control begins.
For the book crowd, this is Hendler's take on Argentine author Natalia Zito's novel Veintisiete noches. Curious how it plays for you — bold adaptation or too neat a bow?
27 Nights is now streaming on Netflix worldwide.