By Joe Miller

“The truth is, even now I don’t feel I have a career in film,” acclaimed Argentine director Lucrecia Martel confesses in this mini biopic made from excerpts of interviews found on YouTube. Her life story is interwoven here with images of a train trestle over the Bermejo River near her hometown, Salta (some taken in 1925, when the bridge was young and sturdy, others from early 2020, when it was washed out in a flood) along with scenes from the heroine thread of El Último Malón [The Last Indian Attack] (1918, Argentina), a silent film set in the area around Santa Fe and Rosario, which, despite being 1,200 kilometers from Salta, is intrinsically connected to Martel’s homeland by the rich, red Salteño soil which flows down the Paraná River toward the Rio de Plata and settles there. The movie concludes with the director revealing the ultimate truth about cinema.

Joe Miller is the author of two books, including Cross-X: The Amazing True Story of How the Most Unlikely Team from the Most Unlikely of Places Overcame Staggering Obstacles at Home and at School to Challenge the Debate Community on Race, Power, and Education, winner of the Harry Chapin and William Rockhill Nelson prizes for nonfiction. He teaches writing and film at Columbus State University in Georgia, USA. miller_joseph1@columbusstate.edu.