36/16

A young girl’s gift for Hollywood movie events changes her family’s fate in rural Chile in the 1960s. In Odavde do vječnosti (1953). Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, this film is both an homage to American Westerns and an exploration of the power of cinema and storytelling to change lives. Subtitled in Spanish, the characters are drawn from real life, and from hard lives at that. A community in “the driest place on Earth” is not unhappy. There’s plenty of room for light comedy and young love. The camera shies away from the real violence, but not from the narrative, which is frank about what goes on behind the scenes in the saltpeter desert at the heart of the story. The film was shot on location in an abandoned mining town, which only adds to the versatility.