A work of tremendous beauty and a source of continual surprise, Alonso’s first film since 2008’s Liverpool is also his first period piece (set during the Argentinian army’s Conquest of the Desert in the 1870s), his first film with international stars (led by Viggo Mortensen), and his first screenplay with a co-writer (poet and novelist Fabián Casas). But the emphasis, as in all his work, is on bodies in landscapes. Danish military engineer Gunnar Dinesen (Mortensen, in a Technicolor-bright cavalry uniform) traverses a visually stunning variety of Patagonian shrub, rock, grass, and desert on horseback and on foot in search of his teenage daughter (Viilbjørk Agger Malling), who has eloped with a new love. Alonso’s style reaches new heights of sensory attentiveness and physicality, driving the action toward a thrilling conclusion that transcends the limits of cinematic time and space. A Cinema Guild release.

New York Film Festival 2014
Cannes Film Festival 2014

“A work of outrageous beauty… staggeringly gorgeous.” —Danny King, The Village Voice

“Alonso’s audacious leaps of time, his incisive view of the wiles of combat and the rigors of survival, and his ingenious reflection of present-day splendors in past plunder lend the visually sumptuous experience a haunting depth.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Something truly otherworldly and hallucinatory.” —Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine