FOGO
Director: Yulene Olaizola
Producer: Yulene Olaizola, Rubén Imaz
Screenwriter: Yulene Olaizola
Cinematographer: Diego Garcia
Cast: Norman Foley, Ron Broders, Joseph Dwyer
Canada, Mexico
97 mins
2012

The deterioration of a small community in Fogo Island is forcing its inhabitants to leave and resettle. Places once occupied by humans are now becoming part of the tundra landscape. In spite of a condemn future, there are some residents who decide to remain, holding on to their memories and grieving for the past, when life in Fogo was different
Fogo, an island in northeastern Newfoundland, Canada, with uninviting geography and an infinitely mysterious landscape, the territory chosen to be filmed, offers a set of scenes and a story as minimal as it is universal. Olaizola is, first, a good interpreter of a territory, then she writes, films, constructs. Geography, imagination and image.

The houses seem bent under the force of gravity, the atmospheric conditions are harsh, and building an economy seems impossible; given these circumstances, the men live in a kind of zero degree existence, and even so, the sense of rootedness and belonging is stronger than a possible migration to a kinder world. Olaizola simply registers the noble resistance of the inhabitants. To drink, sing, walk with a friend, play with pets, prepare and light a fire, actions lacking transcendence, here take on a luminosity and dignity revealed by a director obsessed with finding the exact frame and willing to wait for the precise gesture and expression of her characters.