New York, NY – October 18, 2010 – Kino International is proud to release Liverpool (2008) on DVD, Lisandro Alonso’ s internationally acclaimed Argentinean feature about an itinerant sailor traveling home to his estranged mother in Tierra del Fuego. Using non-professional actors he met in the area, it is a strikingly authentic look at life on the margins of society.
The film premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and traveled around the world (it was selected to the Toronto, Rio De Janeiro, Hong Kong, and Rotterdam festivals, among numerous others). Liverpool was also featured in a full retrospective of Alonso’s films at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010, andwill now prebook on November 2, 2010, on DVD. With a SRP of $29.95, Liverpool will become available to the general public on November 30.
Farrel (Juan Fernández) is an enigmatic seaman who takes shore leave from a massive, lonely cargo ship in order to make the arduous journey to a remote sawmill on the southern tip of South America. With his sole company a bottle of vodka, he hitchhikes in sullen silence, trudging past stunning snow  swept landscapes (beautifully shot by Lucio Bonelli), as unspoken tragedies rattle around in his skull. When he finally reaches his mother, he discovers he has been forgotten, a ghost to his family and his hometown.
The lead actor, Fernández, was working in a snow plow when Alonso met him during his travels. Alonso has cast non-professionals since his debut feature, La Libertad (2001, named one of the ten best films of the decade by Cinema Scope magazine), choosing to work on the thin boundary between documentary and fiction. Because of this unique style, Manohla Dargis of the NY Times called Alonso “one of the more prominent filmmakers to emerge from Argentine cinema”, in her review of Liverpool.
He is attracted to locations first, sketching out a brief outline of a story once he gets there, and then finds locals to enact the tale. His films are documents of the varying landscapes of Argentina as much as evocative stories about the hardscrabble life of solitary working-class men. He has said, “For me, making films is an excuse to see different places and people.”
For Liverpool, his fourth film (the others are Los Muertos (2004) and Fantasma (2006)), Â he became entranced with a magazine story about Tierra del Fuego, and then traveled multiple times through the province, even living on the freighter that would later carry Farrel down the coast, from Buenos Aires to Tierra del Fuego.
Alonso made the five-day journey twice, living on the lowest deck. So every bead of sweat or trudge through the snow that Fernández experienced, Alonso also experienced, lending every carefully composed shot the ring of truth. The  film, as Keith Uhlich wrote in his five star review for Time Out NY, is an “enigmatic masterpiece.”
Liverpool
Director: Lisandro Alonso
Screenplay: Lisandro Alonso and Salvador Roselli
Cinematographer: Lucio Bonelli
Sound: Catriel Vildosola
Music: Flormaleva
Art Director: Gonzalo Delgado
Editing: Lisandro Alonso, Fernando Epstein, Martin Mainoli, and Sergi Dies
A Production of 4L (Argentina), Fortuna Films (NL), Slot Machine (F)
In Co-Production with Eddie Saeta (E), Black Forest Films (D)
With Support from INCAA, Hubert Bals Fund, Rotterdam IFF, World Cinema Fund, Programa IBERMEDIA
82 minutes
1.85 Aspect Ratio, Enhanced for 16×9 Televisions
5.1 Dolby Surround
Spanish with Optional English Subtitles
Interview with the Director
Stills Gallery