Boreal
1h 27m
Directed by Federico Adorno • Drama • With Fabio Chamorro, Amado Cardozo, Mateo Giménez, Harold Bergen, Remigio Romero • 2022 • 87 minutes
Benjamín, his uncle César, and Genaro are driven by their Mennonite Boss to a desolate spot in the Paraguayan Chaco, where they will stay for days building a fence for him. The days are long, the progress slow. Benjamín is antsy; he can’t get used to the hard, dull work and to the oppressive silence of this arid region. He wants to leave.
The Boss finally returns 30 days later; unsatisfied with the quality of the work, he tells the trio they need to stay three more days to complete the work. César and Genaro stay behind… but like Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, for them, this time around the wait will be eternal. For César, the oldest of the three and perhaps the most experienced, the magnitude of the physical effort is supported by the pay for the job. Meanwhile, Genaro drowns his sorrows with liters of cheap alcohol. For Benjamin, the youngest, boredom exhausts him as much as carrying logs on his back from one place to another.