Director
Miguel Pereira

Performers
The teacher : Juan Jose Camero
Veronico Cruz : Gonzalo Morales


The Falklands War was no triumph for either side, but Argentina felt the social and economic effects far more than Thatcher's "rejoicing" Britain. Miguel Pereira's film tells the story of Veronico Cruz, a shepherd boy from a native village deep in the Andean foothills of rural Argentina.

A slow-paced, polished series of tableaux tell Cruz's story. The village school teacher befriends Cruz, and the film covers the stormy political years of the military coup in the 1970s through to the Falklands conflict in 1982-3, all from the vantage point of the village of Chorcan. The boy is introduced to the romance of the sea through books and comics supplied by the teacher, and ends up fighting for his country and being dispatched on the ill-fated warship the Belgrano.

The movie is sombre. Simple objects and stunning geography are all beautifully shot with a lovely use of available light and low camera angles. This was the first feature film of the director, Miguel Pereira, and a notable achievement. He was shrewd enough to play to his strengths. He knew the area well and with the extraordinary configurations of rocks, salt pans, snow, skies, and mountain peaks suggests how the topography shapes the people. Through the metaphor of life in Chorcan, he goes on to make statements about under-development, nationalism (both Argentinean and British), the coup, military rule and the war.