Mariano Donoso

In July 2002, an American Producer comissions director Mariano Donoso a documentary on the state of Education in San Juan, the province where he was born. On the first day of filming, a teachers’ strike begins, paralyzing classes in the whole province, and – indirectly – the film itself. Donoso consequently embarks on an odyssey (which is sometimes funny and sometimes sad), through the past and present of his homeland. Stikes, claims, Sarmiento, the earthquake, the province’s bureocracy and its relationship with Buenos Aires, and finally, the desert, await for Donoso in his venturesome journey.

There was once, in 1910, a train able to cross the wild territories between Argentina and Chile, making possible a mythical journey, joining two oceans with a single ticket, from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso. The last trip of the BAP was in 1979; in the nineties, its various branches were permanently abandoned. Since then, travelers have been inhabiting the railway landscape as they dream, desire, remember or yearn: as part of their own being and national history.