La libertad doble

Alonso first came to prominence in 2001 with LA LIBERTAD, which chronicles a single day in the life of a solitary woodcutter. His debut feature broke new ground for Latin American cinema, even if most of the subsequent films that sought to emulate it amounted to little more than pale imitations. Twenty-five years later, Alonso returns to film Misael Saavedra. At first glance, little seems to have changed in the woodcutter’s daily life. His routines remain much the same, although a chainsaw has made his work less arduous. Time, too, has left its unmistakable mark on Misael’s body. But something else has changed: the country he lives in. The freedom of yesterday is no longer the freedom of today, stripped of any emancipatory meaning by a president who relentlessly bellows the word “freedom” while imposing ruthless cuts that leave countless people out in the cold, among them Misael’s sister, a patient in a state hospital. The sequences set within that institution resemble a tableau vivant of a spectral world, the microscopic view of a country deliberately blighted by structural adjustment carried out in the name of market freedom. Against this, Alonso sets another understanding of freedom, one grounded in responsibility towards others. (Roger Koza)

In the presence of Ilse Hughan (production).

Lisandro Alonso: DOS EN LA VEREDA (1995, K, KO-REGIE), LA LIBERTAD (2001), LOS MUERTOS (2004), FANTASMA (2006), LIVERPOOL (2008), SIN TÍ- TULO (CARTA PARA SERRA) (2011, K), JAUJA (2014), EUREKA (2023)