TITLE: Gaucho Gaucho
Section: U.S. Documentary Competition
Directors: Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw
Logline: A celebration of a community of Argentine cowboys and cowgirls, known as Gauchos, living beyond the boundaries of the modern world.
Sales Agent: Submarine
Panelists: Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw
First screening: Friday, Jan. 19
Key quotes: “It’s a film about a community of gauchos. And gauchos are Argentine cowboys and cowgirls… And to be ‘gaucho gaucho’ is different than just being a gaucho. To be ‘gaucho gaucho’ means you’re a true gaucho. You live by the traditions, you uphold the honor, you dress like a gaucho. You know the songs, the dance. And what we found through the filming is that to be ‘gaucho gaucho’ is really to hold onto this idea of freedom. And that really became sort of the guiding light for the film. It was an exploration of freedom, what it means to be free, the cost of freedom, and the joy and beauty that you can live if you find it.” – Gregory Kershaw
[On making the film in black & white]: “With our films, we always spend so much time there with the communities before we even start filming. And in this case, in Argentina, we spent like a month. At some point it kind of clicked, that this place did feel timeless to us and we did some tests and we looked in the viewfinder. We created a look that was black and white, and all of a sudden it just popped, it’s so beautiful. The textures were so rich, and that’s what we ended up doing. We never actually saw anything in color during the shooting process. Nothing except what was in front of us, but in front of the lens, we never saw anything in color again.”
The Deadline Studio at Sundance ran from January 19-22 at 608 Main Street, when the cast and creatives behind the best and buzziest titles in this year’s lineup joined Deadline’s festival team to discuss their movies and the paths they took to get to Park City.