Viggo El Argentino
Viggo Mortensen and Lisandro Alonso reunite for EUREKA
‘When I started thinking about this film, I thought about Natives and who represents them in film, and immediately I thought of the western genre. I don’t know why, since I’m from Argentina, but I was dreaming of filming a western.’
Lisandro Alonso, interview with FilmComment Magazine.
Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso began working on Eureka while he was a Fellow at Harvard University, and his sixth feature is his most ambitious, and his first to be shot outside of Argentina, with locations including the Pine Ridge Reservations in the US, Mexico and Sergio Leone’s set in Almería, Spain. Drawn to choosing particularly difficult places to film, Alonso’s previous locations include La Pampa (La libertad, 2001), Paraná river (Los muertos, 2004), Tierra del Fuego (Liverpool, 2008) as well as the afore mentioned Patagonia for Jauja (2014).
We look at Alonso’s Native American fable and his creative partnership with Mortensen, and journey into Southern Patagonia to explore the Argentine wilderness.
EUREKA (dir. Lisandro Alonso, Argentina, 2023) - In cinemas 16 Feb
In Eureka, director Lisandro Alonso reunites with actor Viggo Mortensen for their second cinematic collaboration following the 2014 Patagonian Western Jauja.
Eureka premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2023 where Alonso described his intentions for the film: ‘The film unfolds at three different times: first there is a graphic film section, then we move to present day South Dakota and finally to the 1970s, in the middle of a mountainous jungle. It compares the lives of indigenous people today with those who have not yet been affected or subjugated by political and economic states.’
Mortensen plays ‘a gun-slinging loner who busts into a lawless frontier town’ in the opening section of Eureka, however his involvement in Alonso’s film goes deeper: in a recent interview for The Guardian, he discusses his relationship with the Lakota people, and how he introduced the director to Pine Ridge, the Native American reservation in modern-day South Dakota that features in the film.
Eureka ‘is executed with undeniable audacity, and the ride is genuinely surprising and unpredictable’ and can be seen at the ICA Cinema and Curzon Camden from this Friday 16th February, and in Odeon cinemas in Liverpool, Cardiff and Manchester from 19th February.
In Patagonia: Exploring the Argentine wilderness
Delving deep into the wilds of the Argentine landscape, journalist Simon Reeve takes a trip to Patagonia in the BBC series Wilderness with Simon Reeve. Reeve travels up to the huge Southern Patagonia ice field that traverses the border between Argentina and Chile, and then onwards through Torres del Paine to the Grey Glacier of eastern Chile, riding with some Patagonian gauchos along the way and sampling some of their distinct local delicacies.
Reeve was interviewed about his journeys by broadcaster Cerys Matthews for her Sunday show on 6 Music, along with a South American musical tour across Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile with some new and classic tracks.
You can listen to the show here and check out the Los Gatos song La balsa that launched rock national (or Argentine rock) in the country.
Society of the Snow sweeps the Goyas
Argentine actor Matias Recalt took home the award for Best Breakthrough Actor at Spain’s Goya awards last week, for his portrayal of Roberto Conessa in Society of the Snow (La sociedad de la nieve). J. A. Bayona’s re-telling of the survival story in the Andes took home a total of 12 awards including Best Director and Best Film, making it one of the biggest winners in the history of the Goyas.
Coming soon: A Wolfpack Called Ernesto - In cinemas 23rd February
Many films have looked at gang and cartel warfare in Mexico, however Everando González’s documentary takes a different approach in focusing on the kids drawn into crime. Using scorpion-tail devices to which iPhones were attached to the backs of a group of teenage gangsters who collectively call themselves ´Ernesto’, the viewer is able to follow them close range. Yet by only being able to see the backs of their heads we can’t tell who is who, so their anonymity is preserved. ‘Immersive, engaging and brilliantly unsettling.”
That’s all for now.
Saludos!
The Argentine Film Festival team