El Impenetrable

On his father’s death, Daniele inherits a small patch of land in the middle of the Paraguayan forest, 5,000 hectares of unspoilt nature stuck between oil company concessions, fields of transgenic soybean owned by the rich landowner, Favero, and the meagre Indian reserves. In the company of his old ornithologist friend, Jato, and the vanishing points of the Chaco’s dusty rectilinear roads, Daniele sets out to discover this unusual inheritance. And his troubles are far from over….In the Chaco, a Paraguayan far-west where criminals thrive to the bane of the local communities and wildlife, Daniele is like a Don Quixote battling injustice. He learns to cope with local customs: roads blocked by heavily armed guards, the formidable bonhomie of the mafia-style Favero and the inextricable bureaucratic imbroglios. On this treasure hunt, which smacks less of the mystical quest of an Aguirre and more of a caustic history lesson on the poisonous heritage of colonialism and the Paraguayan dictatorship, Fausta Quattrini’s camera offers a friendly presence, while Daniele’s voice-over recounts the twists and turns of his Kafkaesque adventure inside the administrative and political meanders of Paraguay’s history.

Alice Leroy, Critikat.com