Film - The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future

Sovereign announces the UK cinema release next month of the powerful and unique The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future. Watch a clip ...

Press Release

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future, the debut feature from the award-winning director Francisca Alegría, is timely, haunting and unforgettable.

When thousands of fish die in a polluted river in southern Chile, Magdalena, a woman long-deceased, emerges amongst their lifeless bodies. Magdalena encounters her widowed husband, sending him into a state of shock and prompting the return of their daughter, Cecilia. Magdalena’s presence and her effect on the environment stirs curiosity and fear among her family. As the past comes into focus, mother and daughter meet an opportunity to change the future.

Filmed in the extraordinary landscapes of Chile by cinematographer Inti Briones, sensitively scored by Pierre Desprats, The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future features a wonderful lead performance from Mía Maestro (Hannibal) as Magdalena, a woman who, to the shock of her family, comes back from the dead, and discovers she has an important purpose to fulfill. The film is filled with striking images and quietly powerful moments and is a beautiful, meditative masterwork, part surreal eco-drama, part magical sci-fi, and fully unique and engaging.

Francisca Alegría is an award-winning filmmaker who obtained her degree in directing from the Universidad Católica de Chile and her M.F.A. in Screenwriting and Film Directing at Columbia University. Her short film And the Whole Sky Fit in the Dead Cow’s Eye received the award for Best International Fiction Short Film at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Best Latin American Short Film at Miami Film Festival and was selected at Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and New York Film Festival. 

The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future was inspired by a real event in Chile in 2017, the unexplained death of thousands of fish in a river. “Thinking of those fish,” Alegría says, “I wondered if they knew that something was wrong before they died. I wondered if they felt fear while agonising or if they could see where they were going next. A once magnanimous belief system is falling and reaching the state of agony that Mother Earth has been in for a long time... we are all suffering together now, and I wish that we could be more aware, more empathic, and more willing to listen.”

The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future comes to UK cinemas on 24th March, thanks to Sovereign.

Image - Sovereign