‘Pichuco’ Director Martín Turnes Unpackages ‘El Agrónomo,’ a Sustainable Production Plumbing Agro-Industry Pollution
23.08.2023 - 14:43
/ variety.com
Holly Jones Argentine director Martín Turnes, whose feature “Pichuco” snagged the Argentine Film Critic Association’s Silver Condor Award for best documentary in 2015, is bringing his first full-length fiction title, “El Agrónomo,” to Sanfic Industria’s Works In Progress. Filmed in Marcos Paz, Argentina with the support of Marcos Paz Film TV, the project is produced by Fernando Romanazzo of Buenos Aires-based Aqueronte alongside Zebra Films (“Manifesto”) and Haz Cooperativa Audiovisual.
“’El Agrónomo’ won me over with the elements it combines. It intends to establish a critique of this agro-industrial, polluting production system, without falling into empty denunciation.
Martín uses an unexpected tool for this: Genre,” producer Fernando Romanazzo told Variety. “It also motivated me.
Being a promoter of sustainable and multicultural production within the audiovisual sector, together with my partner Fabiana Bepres, this project offered the possibility of utilizing that type of production method in a medium-sized fiction film, with a noteworthy cast and technical team, demonstrating that it’s possible to produce this way, with coherence between the theme and the making of the film itself, taking care of the environment, our pachamama. Above all, this is the ideology that we implement and preach,” he added.
Gastón’s life is upended when he moves his family to a rural farming community to continue his career as an agronomist working to resurrect failing crops, a decision quickly contested by locals and those he holds dear. Motivations and frustrations reach a fever pitch as the plot dutifully contemplates the high consequence of widespread pesticide use in agriculture while centering fraught family dynamics, portraying the
.