The Argentine mid-length film From the Mountain We See the Mountain, directed by Julián García Long, will be part of the Official Section of Punto de Vista, the International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary from April 20 to 25 in Pamplona. The film joins the competitive lineup of the festival, which this year selected nineteen titles—eight features and eleven shorts—from nearly 900 submissions. The festival will open on Monday, April 20 with Benita, by Alan Berliner, and close on Saturday the 25th with A Scary Movie, by Sergio Oksman.

García Long’s film blends ethnographic documentary and magical realism to explore the mystery of a Patagonian native forest consumed by fire. Through contradictory accounts of how a blaze began, the film challenges the image of an empty Patagonia and reveals a complex web of relationships, memories, and conflicts. From Mapuche communities reclaiming their ancestral lands to volunteers engaged in reforestation efforts, the work embraces the diversity of experiences within a territory marked by fire and colonization.

According to the filmmaker, the project emerged from an impossibility. Two days before traveling from Brussels to Patagonia, the team was denied permission to film in a burned forest. The provincial company responsible for the area refused access, amid concerns that tensions over land use might be exposed. Despite this, the three-person crew decided to travel and explore the region. They eventually reached Ñorquinco, where the film’s core narrative took shape during a planting day with scientists, volunteers, and members of Mapuche communities. There, conflicting accounts of the fire’s origin coexisted: while a reforestation project leader attributed it to a lightning strike during a summer storm, a Mapuche park ranger claimed it had been intentional, on a sunny day. This clash of narratives became the film’s defining starting point.

Made with a small crew by choice and necessity, the production was initially funded through a doctoral arts grant in Belgium. It later received local support from Neuquén, the Sound Image Culture workshop, the production company Dérives, and the school Le Fresnoy, particularly during post-production.

The Official Section of Punto de Vista will feature films produced in eighteen countries, including Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Spain, Qatar, Greece, Iran, the United Kingdom, Chile, Italy, Austria, Belarus, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, France, Portugal, and Belgium. The program will include four world premieres, one European premiere, and fourteen Spanish premieres. Films will compete for awards presented by the International Jury—yet to be announced—the Youth Jury, and the audience, to be given at the closing ceremony at Baluarte. The selection was made by a programming committee composed of Inés Calero, Ekhiñe Etxeberria, Antonio Miguel Arenas, and Margot Mecca, alongside the festival’s new artistic director, Miquel Martí Freixas. With its selection, From the Mountain We See the Mountain joins an edition that reinforces the presence of Latin American cinema at one of the leading international festivals dedicated to auteur documentary.