Al amparo del cielo (Under the Sky Shelter)

Event has passed Close-Up Cinema,
Director: Diego Acosta
Year: 2021
Country: Chile
Duration: 70’
Format: 16mm to digital
Audio: no dialogue
Awards: BEST Chilean Feature 2021

Don Cucho sets out for new pastures, his herd in tow, as he does each year, and as his Andean predecessors have done for centuries before him. Under Diego Acosta’s observation, this well-established journey is injected with a new vitality. What would otherwise be mundane images of a seasonal ritual – the massed heads of livestock, the flow of water – take on a new otherworldly luminosity when captured on Acosta’s black-and-white 16mm film. From the expanse of the sky down to the furrows on fireside brows, every facet of the journey is captured with equal parts languid observation and nervy flickers of anxiety. Under the Sky Shelter is a pastoral journey that is deeply grounded in the materiality of its environment but that is not without a touch of rural eerie.

Followed by a Q&A with Diego Acosta

“Under Diego Acosta’s observation, this journey is injected with a new vitality. What would otherwise be mundane images of a seasonal ritual – the massed heads of livestock.” [J.L. Moreno]