TRENQUE LAUQUEN PART 1 + PART 2

A woman disappears. Laura (Laura Paredes), a researcher working for the town, had come to Trenque Lauquen, a small town in the pampas of Buenos Aires province, to find a rare flower. Two men set out to look for her: her boyfriend Rafael (Rafael Spregelburd) and Ezequiel (Ezequiel Pierri) from the town. What they piece together leads to old love letters hidden in books at the town library, to another woman who disappeared decades earlier, and to a creature, half human, half animal, said to have been pulled from the lake. “Trenque Lauquen” by Laura Citarella (Argentina, 2022) is a puzzle film in which every riddle opens a new one.

Argentine director Laura Citarella, a member of the El Pampero Cine collective, tells the story in two parts totalling 260 minutes, in a structure of flashbacks nested inside one another like Russian dolls. Laura is her Sherlock Holmes, she says, out for adventure rather than solutions. The film is about women as detectives and researchers, about motherhood, territory, and the plain that swallows everything. It premiered in the Orizzonti section in Venice in 2022. “Trenque Lauquen” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2022 in the Berlinale World Cinema Fund section.

Shown at the 2022 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2022 · Film Archive