Magic Farm

A group of New Yorkers set off on a journey to make a Vice-like documentary about a new musical trend in Latin America, but soon realise they’ve ended up in the wrong spot. Stranded in rural Argentina, they explore the town as non-Spanish speaking aliens, discussing whether it’s ok to make up their own trend instead. Slowly, but surely, the film begins to engage with the strangeness of this place: crop dusting planes that interrupt their camera set-ups, children and adults with various illnesses, a community with no way out trying to live a normal life despite poisonous air and water. But this is no realist fiction—rather, Amalia Ulman concocts a sweetly bizarre mix of skate videos, 3D, animal POVs and a teenage summer rom-com. The foreigners and locals grow ever closer as they work together to create a street party and trend rolled into one. Shot in San Antonio de Areco, a gaucho-chic town steeped in tradition that has seen its fair share of agrotoxic scandals, MAGIC FARM identifies and explores the moment at which laughing at someone becomes laughing with them. It eventually plumps for the latter category in smart, quietly political fashion, whether with respect to human tenderness or man-made environmental terrors. (Lucía Salas)

In the presence of Amalia Ulman.

Amalia Ulman: EL PLANETA (2021)