The Dead

Colour, 35 mm
Argentina, 2004, 78 min
Section: Forum of Independents

Synopsis

54-year-old Vargas is released from jail in the province of Corrientes, Argentina. Once he is out, he intends to find his now adult daughter who lives in a remote swampy area. To get there, he must travel a great distance, most of it in a small boat on a river running deep into the jungle. But this is not a problem for Vargas, who evidently used to live close to nature in the past. The world he finds looks almost unchanged even after long years spent in jail. Still, he is a highly mysterious figure: Is he a murderer? Whom did he kill? What happened years ago in the jungle? Is he a bad, violent person, or a victim? Do Good and Evil exist at all in this strange, almost mythical, and yet so real world? This radically minimalist, daring masterpiece with hardly any dialogue or narrative story uses totally modern cinematographic language and has a strikingly intense and unique visual style.

About the director

Lisandro Alonso (b. 1975, Buenos Aires) studied at the Universidad del Ciné in Buenos Aires and later worked as assistant director on various feature films. In 1995 he wrote and co-directed the short film Dos en la vereda (with Catriel Vildosola). His radical feature debut La libertad (Freedom, 2001), also shown at Karlovy Vary (Forum of Independents, 2003), attracted a lot of attention and received prizes at various international film festivals. Los Muertos is Alonso’s second feature.