With its perfect beaches and picturesque sunsets, Cape Polonio can be an idyllic destination for those looking to disconnect from the world (or “unplug” themselves, which is a very appropriate cliché here). However, and as Montevideo-born Natalia points out at the very beginning of Rosenfeld and Garisto’s documentary, the very few inhabitants that are still fighting the cold after the tourist season is over are not there “for no reason”. She herself got there after leaving the city that asphyxiated her back when she lost her baby, and all the neighbors have settled there for a reason: they are running away from something. And during those rough winter months, they turn the whole town into a hospital, and its people into patients. By listening to a lucid and painful survival story, El Polonio finds characters that are stranger than fiction –like the man who believes a Chinese invasion is only a matter of time– and captures very hypnotic and alienated images in a beautiful but hostile environment: the rocks, the ocean, the sand as it comes alive with the wind, and a seemingly endless sky. –Mar del Plata International Film Festival
A woman, whose daughter died years ago, lives in a simple house in a quiet seaside town in what is, I think, Uruguay during the cold season.
