Wendy Ide 

The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future review – heady Chilean eco fantasy

River pollution is the spur for debut director Francisca Alegría’s atmospheric Spanish-language fable with nature at its heart
  
  

Enzo Ferrada Rosati in The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future.
Enzo Ferrada Rosati in The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future. Photograph: Film PR handout

Blending science fiction and magical realism, environmental catastrophe and family secrets, Francisca Alegría’s heady mystery is an ambitious and murkily atmospheric debut. Set in Chile, this Spanish-language picture takes a real-life event – the pollution of a river by a paper mill – as a jumping-off point. The disaster kills fish and wildlife, but it reanimates Magdalena (Mía Maestro), who drowned in the river many years before. Mute, Magdalena now communicates through digital technology. The tech-fantasy crossover has a kinship with the recent Neptune Frost, but most of all this film about motherhood and natural balance has unexpected parallels with Andrea Arnold’s Cow.

Watch a trailer for The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future.
 

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