Alfredo Castro

If the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez aren’t enough to remind you how firmly the origins of magic realism lie in Latin America, then the cinema of Alfonso Arau, Guillermo del Toro and – now – Francisca Alegria collectively act to make sure you don’t forget. With The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future, Alegria marks her confident feature debut, crafting a tale as strange as it is memorable. Tonally the film is somber, almost at times even reverent, as it paints a complex family web and a world gone mad, where nature necessarily must suffer at the hands of progress.