Viggo Mortensen gives a commanding central performance in this mystical piece of slow cinema from Argentine director Lisandro Alonso.
Set in a remote military outpost in Patagonia during the so-called ‘Conquest of the Desert’ of 1882, Jauja is the story of a man’s desperate search for his daughter, a solitary quest that takes us to a place beyond time, where the past vanishes and the future has no meaning.
Captain Gunnar Dinesen has come from Denmark with his teenaged daughter to take an engineering job with the Argentine army. Being the only female in the area, Ingeborg creates quite a stir among the men. When she elopes with a young soldier, Dinesen embarks on a treacherous journey into enemy territory to find the young couple.