Los Colonos
Rugged Chilean western about three men sent on a bloody mission to cleanse a vast tract of land of its indigenous inhabitants. A film about the painful birth of Chile. Award-winning at Cannes.
Births are usually not a fun ride; they’re mostly painful. In his searing first feature, Chilean director Felipe Gálvez Haberle frames the birth of his homeland through the singular, agonizing experience of a young mixed-race man named Segundo, who’s sent alongside a half-deranged British ex-military soldier and a Texas cowboy on a bloody mission to clear an expanse of land of Indigenous people for the powerful, relentless man who owns it.
The vast, unforgiving landscapes of Patagonia – the ‘end of the earth’ – are the perfect backdrop for a story that can read almost like a classic western for its forceful impulse to capture the mad drive of white men to conquer and dominate everything at any cost. The impeccable production design gets the audience closer and closer to the film’s burning core of absurdity and painful contradiction, making history almost too real to stomach. (source: www.tiff.net)