Yatasto
Hermes Paralluelo
2011 - 98 min - Beta digital & HDCam - Couleur - Espagne

"For his first film Hermes Paralluelo went to meet the cartoneros, rag-and-bone men through coercion, in Villa Urquiza, a district on the periphery of Cordoba in Argentina. We know the risk of filming destitution in terms of pathos and indulgence. In contrast to this facile approach, Paralluelo maintains his distance. It consists of patient, wide, fixed shots in which conversations unfurl and ramshackle spaces are glimpsed. A little world is revealed to us, from which Ricardo, a baby-faced ten-year- old, stands out, surrounded by his cousins, Bebo and Pata (themselves just out of childhood), his grandmother and his elder sister, who are attentive and affectionate. The child’s big dream: a race horse. Not the horse which pulls his rubbish cart, but a beautiful beast he wants to call Yatasto, after the legendary thoroughbred.
The cart in which he and his companions cross the city guides us on long trips syncopated by the dogged sound of horseshoes. This slow and derisory coupling provides the only point of view for glimpsing the present but far-off world of others. The camera is fixed on the cart and creates a counterpoint to their discussions through tracking shots of successive streets, garbage collection and the flux of automobile traffic. Urban figures of an everyday heroism, without tears or cries or fury, but which never lets up."
(Nicolas Feodoroff, FID Marseille 2011)