Retornados
2016 · 10m · España
Directed by Max Demian
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Two young farmers and livestock breeders from Extremadura, both university graduates, describe their lives after returning to the land. Their testimonies reflect the work and social situation faced by many young people today.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a quiet documentary about young people choosing farming—exactly the kind of well-intentioned subject that usually puts me to sleep, which means Demian must be doing something structurally sneaky with how these testimonies are woven that I'd need to see to fully resist.
Retornados sits elegantly within the European essay-documentary tradition, letting two voices carry the weight of a generational reckoning through land and labor—the restraint of the form becomes its own argument about what cinema can hold without flourish.
The decision to let university-educated farmers speak their own testimonies without narration or romantic framing is the film's spine; it trusts that choice so completely that the ordinariness of their days becomes almost radical.