07/07/2025 - Peruvian director Daniel Vidal Toche’s feature debut is a demanding but remarkable and authentic contemplation of the nature of time and the futility of revolution

World-premiering in the Proxima Competition of this year’s Karlovy Vary, Peruvian director Daniel Vidal Toche’s feature debut, The Anatomy of the Horses, is a remarkably original and authentic piece of cinema that asks difficult and important questions. It is also a demanding film to watch, with a quizzical narrative approach and a tonally pessimistic slant.

With the mighty Andes looming in the background amidst some rugged terrain, 18th-century revolutionary Angel (Juan Quispe) is returning, defeated, from battle with his fatally wounded brother on the horse. In the meantime, two indigenous men who are part of a unit led by Spanish soldiers dismember a body and hang its leg, with a message nailed into it, over the cross in a village square.

After his brother dies, he appears in Angel’s dream and tells him that he will travel through time. Waking up in the tall pampas grass, he sees a meteorite falling from the sky, with transmission towers standing in the background. He arrives in his village, now in the present day, where a kind of fair is taking place. The host on the sound system is saying that it has been organised thanks to the kindness of the mining company. Initially lost, Angel finds his footing by joining the ritual dance of a group of men wearing traditional costumes.

At home, his mother is shocked that he didn’t bury his brother – although this was the man’s dying wish. Angel is now wearing a modern outfit and visits the site where the meteorite hit, leaving a crater filled with water. Here, he encounters a woman whose twin sister has gone missing. He recognises that she had been in his dreams, and her disappearance seems to be connected to the mine, which is poisoning the land, animals and children, to the protests of the locals but to the indifference of the mayor.

This plot is just the main line of a complicated and cryptic narrative, told in long takes. The characters speak in metaphors or snippets of indigenous wisdom, often with just one person in the frame. The actors, most of them non-professionals, rarely express emotions on their faces. They move slowly and deliberately through the difficult terrain. Rituals are played out in full detail and duration. Angello Faccini’s camerawork and its post-production are impressive, the image being in 4:3 aspect ratio, with frequent extreme wide shots and close-ups, high contrast and soft, yet intense colours. Dreams are rendered as wavy reflections on the water. Only natural lighting seems to have been used, making the nocturnal scenes dense with shadows. Inur Ategi’s score is abrasive, comprising heavily processed sounds and static noise.

Structurally, the film can be seen as an example of Escher stairs or of the idea that time is a flat circle, and although all of this makes the viewer work hard, the effort pays off. It is an original contemplation on the futility of revolution, and an authentic view of indigenous life and how it is affected by what used to be colonialism and has now been replaced with corporate extractivism.

The Anatomy of the Horses is a co-production between Playa Chica Films (Spain), Pioneros Producciones (Peru), Sideral (Spain), Los Niños Films (Colombia), Mito Films and Promenades Films (France). Loco Films handles the international rights.