Eureka

dir. Lisandro Alonso, 143 minutes, in  English, Lakota, Portuguese with English subtitles

Traversing time, space and genre, Argentinian filmmaker Lisandro Alonso (Jauja) presents an elliptical meditation on the experiences of indigenous communities across the Americas. Opening in a dusty town of the Old West, reality soon transitions to contemporary South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation before finally landing in the jungles of 1970s Brazil. As the triptych unfolds, each temporal and spatial shift provokes metaphysical questions about colonial influence on native peoples and the ever-present tensions between indigeneity and the Western world. Featuring three-time Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen, EUREKA is a graceful refraction of history and place, marking it Alonso’s “most expansive and ambitious film to date” (Screen Anarchy).

“There is a sort of sensory perception, a feeling that through drifting downstream along the river course of this film and gazing at the foliage on either bank, some progress of the soul is being achieved. It is an enriching experience.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian