Director

Théo Court

Spain, Chile, France, Germany  | 2019 | 100 min | Spanish, English, with English Subtitles

• Producer José Alayón, Marina Alberti, Giancarlo Nasi, Andreas Banz, Eva Chillón
• Production Company El Viaje Films, Quijote Films, Kundschafter Filmproduktion, Pomme Hurlante Films
• Screenplay Théo Court, Samuel Delgado
• Cinematography José Alayón
• Editing Manuel Muñoz Ruiz
• Sound Carlos García, Joaquín Pachón, Claudio Vargas
• Cast Alfredo Castro, Lars Rudolph, Lola Rubio
• Contacts

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About the Film

Photographer Pedro (played to perfection by Alfredo Castro) arrives to Chile’s Antarctic region because Mr. Porter, a mysterious and powerful landowner who never appears in the film, wants him as the photographer of his bride and of his wedding. Pedro becomes obsessed with the bride-to-be, Sara, still a prepubescent child, and keeps trying to pose her in a way that would create ambiguous erotism and would eventually allow him to take a photograph that would capture the moment when innocence fades away. His obsession becomes his ruin when Porter, informed of Pedro’s dubious intentions, sends his henchmen to punish him. Penniless, jobless, and with no options, Pedro accepts to become the “official” photographer of the genocide that European landowners are perpetrating against the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego.

The circular structure of the film clearly conveys Court’s message: the staged destruction (symbolic rape) of the innocence of Sara in the name of a superior aesthetic (culture) embodies the essence of the rape of Tierra del Fuego—which, with the same dedication, Pedro tries to immortalize by seeking the right light, the right positions of the corpses, and of the killers posing as heroes.

The wonderful photography of José Ángel Alayón—reminiscent, and not by accident, of Renoir and Goya—is one of the protagonists of the film in its own right.

Teresa Cavina