Acclaimed at the Sundance, San Francisco, Seattle, and Frameline film festivals, Kino Lorber, has announced the North American theatrical releases of the poignant and stunning debut feature by Chilean filmmaker Francisca Alegría, The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future (La vaca que cantó una canción hacia el futuro).
The elegiac eco-fable opens on Friday, May 19, at the Quad Cinema in New York City, and on Friday, May 26 at the Landmark Nuart in Los Angeles, followed by other cities across the country.
It begins at a river in the south of Chile where fish are dying due to pollution from a nearby factory. Amid their floating bodies, long-deceased Magdalena bubbles up to the surface gasping for air, bringing with her old wounds and a wave of family secrets. This shocking return sends her widowed husband into turmoil and prompts their daughter Cecilia to return home to the family’s dairy farm with her own children.
Magdalena’s presence reverberates among her family, instigating fits of laughter and despair in equal measure with all but Cecilia’s eldest child, a transgender teenager, who finds much-needed comfort in their grandmother’s love and unconditional understanding during a time of transition.