During the lockdown of 2020, Lucrecia Mortel returns to her home in Salta, the most conservative region in Argentina, where as a girl, she had developed a passion for westerns. In this rocky and stormy landscape, she meets a tango performer Julieta Laso, who becomes her muse and introduces her to a group of incredibly talented artists and misfits who gather in the woods at night around a fire. Four years after creating her masterpiece Zama, Martel returns to the world’s periphery, in a way that is real, symbolic and political all at once. But this time, against the postcolonial god-forgiven background, radically progressive ideas and gestures get crystallised, which bring her back to the beginnings of her career, when, in paradox, as she has recently noticed in her masterclass in Nyon, she had thought that film is something women did. Now working in a documentary format, Martel immerses herself and gets lost in Julieta Laso’s hoarse, seductive voice, and lets her be her guide through new cinematic and emancipatory landscapes. The protagonist and her director then enact an array of encounters that bring to the surface a plethora of bodies and souls which the camera and spectators never tire of following. The film is a visceral tribute to a community which, although only temporary and passing, serves as a perfect panacea to the pandemic. (DP)

Awards and festivals: 

Berlinale (2022); Doclisboa (2022), Visions du Réel (2023)