The psychological drama by Argentinian director Hernán Belón turns a young family’s rural idyll into a bloodcurdling mind-bending as the couple experience growing anxiety and confront their own mortality.
Young parents, Santiago and Elisa, purchase a country home and move in with their young child. The house’s rural environment makes Elisa uneasy, triggering off mood swings that put a strain on the couple’s love life. The balance of their relation is destabilised as Elisa worries more and more for the safety of her child throughout the sleepless nights.
»El Campo is a story in pieces, of a nightmare, a memory, or an imaginary trip towards the future. The action occurs dislocated of a cause-effect relation; it is compound of cuts that correspond more to a subjective and irrational logic, associated essentially with the character of Elisa, than to a natural or causal logic. Perhaps nothing of this happens in the reality of this couple, but it is a mark, a trace, a slight movement that is going to tilt the precarious balance in which they live. Little by little, as Santiago begins to perceive Elisa’s crisis and gets involved in it, he becomes a close observer through whom the spectator will live this history. They wake up from the dream of civilization, the illusion of ubiquity and of abolished time that predominates in modern society. They realize the fragility of their world, something they had never felt: the concrete possibility of death.« (Hernan Belon)
Hernan Belon
Born in 1970 in Buenos Aires (Argentina). Having graduated from the Film School of the National Institute of Film and Audiovisual Arts (E.N.E.R.C.), he has worked as a director, executive producer, editor and assistant director. Belon’s numerous short and documentary films have received several awards at various international film festivals. In the Open marks his narrative feature debut.