THE WOUNDS

Argentina 2023 - DCP - 82 minutes, in Spanish with English subtitles

Director, Print Courtesy: Alfredo Lichter

Alfredo Lichter, who wowed MIFF audiences two years ago with his Tierra del Fuego-set The Loneliness of the Bones, returns to explore a different landscape of Argentina and to explore the intersection of past and present in The Wounds. During the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of Italians left their country to search for a new life. Argentina was one of several possibilities. Some of these families arrived in the countryside and a small town in Córdoba, an Argentine province. All their lives they wondered: Do we belong here or are we just passing through? The feelings of uprooting and absence are a legacy that endures. But many stories are lost in the landscape. Caravans of machinery move along the roads between endless green fields. Agricultural activity models the social and economic reality, and there are few who inhabit those places. Technological growth on one side; invisible human wounds on the other. Even the town cinema closed for good; its absence is also part of the void. Is this the void suffered by immigrants? No one answers because the protagonists of The Wounds are ghosts. The Wounds is a haunted and haunting and heartfelt journey. —KE