Thirteen-year-old Mora lives in the Patagonian steppes, dragged there by her parents' ecological dream. The only girl in an isolated school in the mountains, she lives out her desire for teenage rebellion by pursuing the idea of becoming a real "gaucho". Her only mentor is the elder Mapuche Nazareno, a simple man who gets into trouble when his most precious possession, his white horse Zahorí, runs away from home. Will that be the real test for Mora?
Structured as an initiatory journey through the evocative and desolate landscapes between Chile and Argentina, Zahorí – the first film by Marí Alessandrini (previous winner of The Films After Tomorrow – Locarno73 production award) – is an evolution of adolescence as a time of passage, in which the child is abandoned to make room for the adult in each of us. For this reason, the windswept expanses scorched by the sun are the theater in which the discovery of the fragility of life goes hand in hand with the affirmation of the person one wants to become, in a passing of the baton that goes beyond gender and nationality to take the form of a fellowship of souls. Between the painful lucidity of Mora and the muffled visions of Nazareno, a new way of retracing a path towards the future will be composed.
Daniela Persico
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