Cecilia travels to her father's farm after he has a heart attack. Back in her childhood home, Cecilia is met by her long-deceased mother whose presence brings to life a painful past chorused by the natural world around them.... (Full plot summary below)
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Cecilia travels to her father's farm after he has a heart attack. Back in her childhood home, Cecilia is met by her long-deceased mother whose presence brings to life a painful past chorused by the natural world around them.
Leave your thoughts about The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future.
| VarietyManuel BetancourtRather than let its timely concerns be embalmed in didacticism, Alegría has crafted a film about healing generational trauma through new modes of living and experiencing desire — of reshaping the world in a way that feels inclusive and expansive, and which does away with relics of a past that should be left to rot at the bottom of a river. |
| The New York TimesBrandon YuThe power of Alegría’s feature debut is found not in dialogue or explication, but in the lyrical, magical realist qualities of folklore: disappointed mothers and fathers, sacred animals and cursed rivers, love and forgiveness. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreMaestro and Varela are the soul and heart — respectively — of this film, one giving it a speechless urgency, the other bringing a woman of science’s common sense pathos and rising alarm. |
| Los Angeles TimesCarlos AguilarThe solution, the filmmaker argues, is a spiritual communion with the unknown, because there’s healing in surrendering to one’s perfect insignificance as part of something bigger. |
| Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganThough the film can at times feel long-winded—a common predicament when transitioning from shorts to features—it is a heady and hypnotic parable for the irreparable ecological harm humans have committed, while insisting that it’s not too late to connect and reconcile with the land that nurtures us. |
| Screen DailyJonathan HollandSolidly grounded, teeming with thought-provoking ideas, wonderfully atmospheric, and often visually striking, this magical realist eco-fable about a dead mother who returns to transform the lives of her dysfunctional family pays the price for its own high ambition and is simply unable to sustain the intensity until the end. But until then, it’s a hypnotic and entrancing ride. |
| VoxAlissa WilkinsonThe Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future is mysterious and elegiac, a tale of warning about a collapsing ecosystem and about deep family wounds. |
| IndieWireRafael MotamayorProviding many questions and very few answers, Alegría and co-writers Fernanda Urrejole and Manuela Infante make a point to show that life can emerge from death, imploring the audience to stop fixating on the damages done in the past and focus on saving the present and future. |
| The Film StageMichael FrankThis feature debut represents a big swing for the Chilean director, a thoughtful, deliberate drama bursting with ecological and personal imagery. A patient narrative rewarding the patient viewer, Cow‘s an abstract portrait of a family and environment in crisis. |
| RogerEbert.comChristy LemireYes, a mournful song is woven throughout, hence the title. But The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future also requires great patience—it might be too slow of a slow burn—and there’s not much to her characters beyond a few barely sketched traits. |
