Special Event: Filmmaker Lisandro Alonso live in living person! Oh, and critic and programmer Dennis Lim, too!

Argentine auteur Lisandro Alonso’s new film is new in a number of ways: it’s his first with professional actors (the ever-versatile Viggo Mortensen, for one); a significant budget; and an even more significant turn towards dialogue, no doubt due to Alonso’s first-time recruitment of a co-screenwriter (poet Fabian Casas). Despite its evident deviations from (and possible advances on, we’ll see) Alonso’s usual protocol, JAUJA retains his fascination with men who “ride lonesome” through the Patagonian sublime. Mortensen portrays a flinty Dane traversing a vividly photographed landscape — not to mention the span between centuries and the ruins of the colonial imagination — as he hunts for his teenaged daughter (Viilbjørk Malling Agger), eloped and perhaps abducted. Expect expansive, painterly compositions; taciturn estrangement; and some artful bending of time and mind.

JAUJA screens tonight at the HFA, several months before its theatrical release, and not only that: director Lisandro Alonso will be on hand, along with critic and programmer Dennis Lim, for a post-screening Q&A. Pretty neat.

10/13 // 7PM
108 minutes
$12

Harvard Film Archive
Carpenter Center
24 Quincy St.
Cambridge, MA