EL ÁRBOL

A vast belief system has been replaced by a non-believing system, and cinema deals with this change in the order of production as well as in the representation of images. Carlos Serrano Azcona's film reflects this diminishment in symbolic sense that is concomitant to the increment in materiality, following its character for an hour as closely as the Dardenne brothers do in their films, but swapping their moral intensity with physical dispersion. What we get to know is that Santiago is a barman, separated, not allowed to see his kids, who wanders lonely through the city, but that doesn't stop the leaking of an opinion on the social landscape that surrounds him (as distressing as his own situation), or the possibility of some encounters (a violent one with his sister-in-law, a commercial one with a prostitute, a fleeting one with his dealer: all of them chastely melancholic) with the other and with himself, even as inscrutable as that of the ending. (Buenos Aires International Festival)

For me the idea of a mystical or spiritual journey was important from the beginning. There are little drops of this in the film. The majority of the film is realistic and the ending is more surrealistic, but for me surrealism is realism, too. It is as real as the other part of the film. (Carlos Serrano Azcona)