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The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine
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The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine
IDFA 2024

The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine

La fabulosa máquina de cosechar oro
Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza
Chile, Netherlands
2024
75 min
Dutch Premiere
Best of Fests
Festival history

Toto has spent most of his life working as a gold prospector on the southernmost tip of Chile. Now in his 60s, he still stands in the river using a sieve to harvest the glistening snippets of gold—day in, day out, come snow or sunshine. He lives a simple and contented life in a little wooden house, along with his son Jorge.

But prospecting is taking an increasing toll on his health, leading to a spell in the hospital. Nonetheless, Toto refuses to trade his way of life for more comfortable work in a neighboring town. So Jorge decides to help his father by designing and building a gold prospecting machine out of old parts.

Over the course of several years the camera follows Toto and Jorge’s dreamlike and melancholic existence. Their conversations and discussions about life, ill-health, and death grow increasingly pressing. Why does fate strike some people harder than others, they wonder, and does it help if you are a believer?

After months of welding, grinding and screw-driving, Jorge’s rusty contraption is in place at last, and his father can get to work again. Will the machine actually work, and will it make Toto’s life easier?

Credits
Director
Production
    Francisco Hervé for Juntos Films,
    Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza for 55 SUR media
Sound
    Gustavo Agurto Vergara,
    Rodrigo Méndez Telias
    Gustavo Agurto Vergara,
    Rodrigo Méndez Telias
Music
    Karl Heortweard
    Karl Heortweard
Distribution for the Netherlands
    Annemiek van der Hell for Windmill Film
    Annemiek van der Hell for Windmill Film
Screening copy
    55 SUR media
    55 SUR media

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