Blanco en Blanco (White on White) (Théo Court, 2019) | NC Latin American Film Festival

Blanco en Blanco (White on White)
(Theo Court, 2019, 100 min, Chile, in Spanish, English, Dutch, and Mapudungun with English subtitles, DCP)

2024 North Carolina Latin American Film Festival

Introduced by Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, Director of the NC Latin American Film Festival

The second feature by Chilean-Spanish director Théo Court centers on Pedro, a photographer who visits an estate in Tierra del Fuego on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries. He has been commissioned by powerful, absent landowner Mr. Porter to photograph his pre-teen bride-to-be Sara. But when Pedro’s interest in the girl breaks its agreed boundaries, he finds himself trapped in Porter’s desolate house, which echoes with creaks, footsteps, and the sound of drunken disorder, and is forced to take part in his host’s terrible project – the systematic extermination of the local indigenous Selk’nam people.

With cinematographer José Alayon mapping the surrounding terrain, from bleached-out snowscapes to parched deserts – as well as the distressed interiors of the Porter mansion – Blanco en Blanco is at once realist and eerily dream-like, with an unsettling lead performance from Alfredo Castro and strong support from Lola Rubio as enigmatic housekeeper Aurora, along with Lars Rudolph in unbridled form as Porter’s mercurial right-hand man. Equal parts landscape study and historical horror story, this is a mesmerising essay on the secret history of early photography, and implicitly on the hidden violence of cinema. – Jonathan Romney

Shown with short film: Cuando Muere una Lengua / Quema polihui se tlajtol camanali (Gabriela Badillo, 2013, 1 min, México, Nahuatl (Huasteca, Hidalgo) with English subtitles, Digital)

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