La última tierra, Pablo Lamar, Paraguay, 2016, 77m, DCP, Spanish
This film can be approached as a natural continuation of Hamaca Paraguaya (2006) by Paz Encina and of Pablo Lamar’s last short film Ahendu nde sapukai (2008), featured in the short film section of the Universidad del Cine.
We return to a rural setting and to a movie whose characters are isolated in the hills, with barely any dialogue against a rich soundscape. We can also consider it as the critical moment when Paraguayan cinema became visible and carved a place in festivals across the world.
An elderly couple lives on an isolated hill. The woman, Evangelina, is dying, and the man, Amancio, is with her as it happens. We bear witness to the ritual of company and the ritual of saying goodbye: the grave, the river, the body. “It has a lot to do with the existential question of what is death and what is life. They are connected. It starts there. The film is at once a search for the specific and the abstract. It’s about getting close to that experience. Experiencing it. Seeing it.”
The film premiered at the Rotterdam festival where it won the Jury’s Prize “for its exception achievement in sound design”. It won the French critic's discovery award at the Toulouse Latin America Film Festival.
We return to a rural setting and to a movie whose characters are isolated in the hills, with barely any dialogue against a rich soundscape. The film premiered at the Rotterdam festival where it won the Jury’s Prize “for its exception achievement in sound design”.