The Argentine film Temporada de caza / Hunting Season, the debut feature by Natalia Garagiola was the winner of the Venice Critics' Week Prize, chosen by the public. The film, which was the only Latin American entry in this year's parallel independent section of the Venice Film Festival, was awarded with a cash prize of €5,000 presented by the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers (SIAE).
Starring Lautaro Bettoni, German Palacios, and Rita Pauls, the father-son drama centers on Nahuel, who is finishing high-school in Buenos Aires and has recently lost his mother. No one from his closest environment can take charge of him so he is put under his father’s custody for three months until he turns 18. Nahuel has an innate violent impulse that he has been gradually learning to control.
His father Ernesto is a tough and silent hunter in San Martin de los Andes, a small village near the mountains in southern Argentina, where he has settled with his new family. They barely remember each other after 10 years of distance. As the journey begins, the wilderness becomes Nahuel’s new environment. There is no “Mother Nature” to welcome him with open arms. Instead, he crashes into a cruel and hostile scenery where the survival of the fittest rules.
