DMovies - Your platform for thought-provoking cinema

Hunting Season (Temporada de Caza)

Like father like son, in South American way: female filmmaker penetrates the masculine world of two men related by blood and yet alien to their similarities, all against the backdrop of the cold and lovely Patagonia - live from Venice.

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM VENICE

Eighteen years after Crane World – the movie that catapulted Argentinian filmmaker Pablo Trapero to fame – snatched two major prizes, the South American country triumphs again at the Festival. Hunting Season has just won the prestigious Audience Award of the 32nd Venice Critics’ Week. The Argentinean filmmaker is no stranger to European festivals: her short film Yeguas y Cotorras premiered at the Critic’s Week of Cannes five years ago.

The female director tells the story of a father and a son, plus the obstacles that they have to overcome in order to fix their broken relationship during a hunting season in the remote and wild areas of Patagonia. She’s a filmmaker sensitive enough to dive into the world of male relationships and to portray how men deal with loss, rage and detachment.

Nahuel (Lautaro Betton) just lost his mother to cancer. His stepfather Bautista (Boy Olmi) is not able to help him to deal with his loss. Nahuel is angry, aggressive and somehow is projecting his pain onto the world through a burst of rage. After a serious fight during a football match, Nahuel is expelled from school and decides to take some time off by moving to the South of Argentina in order to stay with his absent father Ernesto (Germán Palacios). Ernesto is a respected hunting guide in Patagonia living a very humble life with his wife and four children.

Their meeting brings out feelings buried deep inside both males. Ernesto doesn’t know his own son enough and Nahuel doesn’t feel respect for his own biological father. The cold and astonishing mountains of Patagonia are the background to these emotional conflicts. The days ahead don’t look very promising as the father and son soon explode into fiery arguments.

Garagiola’s talent shows as she gradually polishes Nahuel’s character into emotional maturity. At first, characters are trapped inside their feelings, but they slowly set themselves free. Many Argentinean films rely on a straightforward script laced with complex sentiments instead of a large budget and they are very successful in their endeavour.

Female characters are secondary, as Garagiola concentrates instead on building two very similar male characters from different generations. At first, they don’t recognise these similarities because they have lived apart for such a long time. Nahuel and Ernesto mirror each other in their discomfort, in their emotional outbursts and also in their subtle joy at the opportunity to reconnect. The filmmaker deep-dives into the masculine universe without resorting to clichés. A man couldn’t have done the same in such a distant and yet candid way.

Hunting Season showed at the 74th Venice International Film Festival, which ends this weekend. It won the Audience Award of the 32nd Venice Critics’ Week.


By Tiago Di Mauro - 10-09-2017

Based in London, Di Mauro is an experienced Director and Producer with extended training in Film Curating. He has worked in short films, documentaries, TV, adverts, web shows and music videos. In 2020...

DMovies Poll

Are the Oscars dirty enough for DMovies?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Most Read

Sexual diversity is at the very heart of [Read More...]
Just a few years back, finding a film [Read More...]
Forget Friday the 13th, Paranormal Activity and the [Read More...]
A lot of British people would rather forget [Read More...]
QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN A candidate’s [Read More...]
Pigs might fly. And so Brexit might happen. [Read More...]

Read More

Invisible

Pablo Giorgelli
2017

Tiago Di Mauro - 05-09-2017

Pablo Giorgelli's second film about the tough choices that a young, unwed and loveless mother-to-be in Argentina has to make - live from Venice [Read More...]

The Summit (La Cordillera)

Santiago Mitre
2017

Victor Fraga - 26-05-2017

Into the heart of politics: this Argentinean fiction about a summit for Latin American presidents blends geopolitics with a very personal breakdown - from the BFI London Film Festival [Read More...]

The City of The Future

Cláudio Marques/ Marília Hughes
2016

Tiago Di Mauro - 24-07-2016

Brazilians can teach the world a thing or two about romance; this brand new drama about polyamorous love in the most unlikely of places will open your heart and your mind, in good and old-fashioned South American way [Read More...]