‘Far From the Trees’ Review: A Richly Contemplative Journey of Physical and Mental Meanderings, Beautifully Combining 4K Digital with Super 16
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- Meritxell Colell Aparicio's 'Far From the Trees' premieres in competition at Locarno, a contemplative drama combining 4K digital, Super 16mm and archival footage to capture different textures of memory.
- The film follows Adela (played by sound artist Angélica Castelló), a Vienna-based Mexican sound artist traveling through southeastern Peru recording rapidly dying indigenous languages and tree sounds alongside multilingual guide Lucho (José Luis López Cama).
- Super 16mm flashbacks depict Adela's Mexican childhood with housekeeper Paula (Teresita Sánchez) and her grandparents Toni and Emili, left-wing Catalan researchers who fled the Spanish Civil War; archival footage of anti-Franco exiles leaving Spain bookends the family history.
- Production designer Anna Auquer builds the family's cluttered home and a dreamlike vine-and-grass-covered bed sequence, while cinematographer Julián Elizalde moves comfortably between digital and Super 16mm tonalities.
- Aparicio's debut 'Facing the Wind' premiered at the Berlinale Forum, also exploring tensions between adult children and aging parents.
- The review notes Aparicio resists resolving the power imbalance between Adela's Spanish grandparents and their indigenous housekeeper Paula — a dynamic the protagonist never questions, keeping her silences productively inscrutable.
Why it matters: A Locarno competition premiere elevates Aparicio's second feature beyond her already Berlinale-recognized debut, with Variety flagging it could 'become an arthouse sleeper.' The hybrid 4K/Super 16mm format functions as a structural device separating present-day Peruvian fieldwork from inherited Spanish Civil War exile trauma — not decoration.
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