Director Marí Alessandrini presented her first feature-length film, Zahorí, which is competing in the Meeting Point section, on Thursday 28th October 20th, 2021. The film focuses on Mora, a 13-year-old girl who wants to be a gaucho. To do so, she rebels against school and asserts herself to her parents, a couple of Swiss-Italian ecologists and the dream of autonomy becomes a nightmare.
Set in Patagonia, where the director grew up, the young protagonist of Zahorí will go into the meanders of the steppe to help her only friend, Nazareno, an old Mapuche who has lost his mare, whose name the film gets its title from.
At a very young age, Marí Alessandrini began working in photography, performing arts and contemporary circus, travelling around South and North America. At the age of 26 she left Argentina to study Filmmaking in Europe and graduated in Film Directing and Visual Arts from the School of Art and Design (HEAD) at the University of Geneva.
She was chosen by the Cinéfondation of the Cannes Film Festival to develop her first feature film, Zahorí, which she shot in the Patagonian steppe. The film won the Leopards of Tomorrow Award at the Locarno Film Festival 2020.
