Los Saldos / Remainders

José Ramón Capdevila – Director’s Note

The farm has always been a part of my life. I remember playing with my sister while my father worked, inventing fictional worlds: a neighbor’s farm could be an imposing market town, a small barn the place where a powerful sage lived, and the old trailer, a fearsome warship. I miss those moments and this feeling has been one of the main thrusts I have had when making this film, only now I play with the western, more specifically in its twilight stage.

This time, the farms and warehouses are old ranches run by exhausted cowboys, aware that their time has passed and they have been left behind, overwhelmed by progress and the new nascent civilization of large industrial livestock. These small peasants, like the hero of the west, were in charge of bringing the “idea of progress” to the territory, but once it was carried out, they were displaced on the margins and condemned to disappear.

Currently only my father works on the farm and, when he retires, no one will continue. It will be the end of three generations of farmers and ranchers who inhabited this place. Los balances is an acidic and loving farewell letter at a time that, like so many others, history will leave behind.