Review: The Great Movement
Monday, August 15, 2022 at 11:38AM 
In 2016, Bolivian director Kiro Russo took his first feature to Locarno, where the Jury for the Golden Peacock presented him with a special Centenary Award for Best Debut Film. Dark Skull was an exercise in modern Neorealism, reinventing that movement from Italian cinema to a Latin American setting and deep-rooted specificity. More in line with the operatic myth of Visconti's La Terra Trema than with De Sica's urban melodramas, the film followed Elder's return to his desolate hometown upon his father's death. With the patriarch fallen, the son takes on his work, going into the mines like those before him. Those shadowy realms become the entrails of a cavernous titan through the gaze of Russo's camera, the industrial work shattered into a nightmare by mad editing, expressionist sound.
Underrated and under-discussed, Dark Skull was a tremendous triumph, and The Great Movement follows in its steps. Only this time, instead of Italian and German influence, Russo seems to be exploring the possibilities of Soviet montage and social realism, retrofitted as a new cinema for a new world…