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“There’s So Much Evil Done Because People Are Just Doing their Job”: Writer/Director Amalia Ulman On Her Satirical Comedy/Drama, Magic Farm
Chloe Sevigny in Magic Farm Clueless and a bit pathetic, the American video crew in Magic Farm, writer-director Amalia Ulman’s new satirical comedy, embody the vices of Western media companies that exoticize, exploit and sanitize the stories of the developing world for views. Set in small-town Argentina, the film, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, mostly follows the crew — Edna (Chloë Sevigny), Jeff (Alex Wolff), Justin (Joe Apollonio) — as they try to fabricate the story of a non-existent music act by enlisting the locals’ help. Meanwhile, the more pressing narrative of how the use of glyphosate, sprayed overhead by crop-dusting planes, affects residents goes unnoticed.
For this sophomore effort, Ulman returned to Argentina, the country of her birth, which she left as a child for Spain; growing up, she only visited her homeland on a few trips over the years. Now based in the U.S., the writer-director also plays the role of Elena, who facilitates communication between the gringos and the townies, including navigating the cultural nuances that the foreigners don’t grasp on their own. As in Ulman’s black-and-white debut El Planeta, in which she co-starred alongside her real-life mother, there’s biting social commentary delivered through grounded absurdism in Magic Farm.
Ulman experimented with a 3D camera, with cameras mounted on animals, and with the deliberately kitschy aesthetics of Argentina’s popular music genre, cumbia villera, as well as the over-the-top sincerity of 2000s viral music videos from South America. Speaking from a moving vehicle in New York, Ulman discussed these influences with Filmmaker.
Magic Farm is currently in release from MUBI and opens in additional theaters around the country today.
Filmmaker: Was there a particular video from VICE or any of those networks that prompted the plot of Magic Farm?
Ulman: Well, not like a specific one — it was a combination, although there is one very early VICE [episode] about the bota picuda that comes to mind. And I did get information from a friend who did the research and dirty work for the face of one of those shows. He gave me a bit of a rundown of how they worked, and he was very honest about all the flaws in the system. Obviously, there are shows like States of Undress, which I always found very funny, especially seeing hosts of certain shows wearing designer clothes in the middle of nowhere, different outfits in every scene — things that I personally found kind of cringe. So, yeah, it’s a combination of different VICE episodes and different shows.
I personally don’t have anything against VICE per se, but I think it’s more like a generational thing because of the kind of stuff my parents would be into. They’re obsessed with U.S. culture and with understanding the world that way. It has to be cool all the time, it has to look cool, and it can never be serious. Never looking at actual issues. That’s my background, and so the film is inspired by that world I knew very well and the issue of the glyphosates, which affects anybody who’s in touch with it. VICE was a vehicle for me to tell the story in maybe a more silly way and also in a way that I’m very familiar with.
Filmmaker: What was your relationship with Argentina growing up? Was that a place that you visited? I know that you that you grew up mostly in Spain, or were you going back and forth?
Ulman: My relationship with Argentina was very intense because my parents hated the fact that they were in Spain. They sort of got trapped there because they became very poor, very fast. And by very poor, I mean, asking charities for clothing. They really resented that they were in that situation, and maybe a lot of it came from the fact that Argentinians do think they’re superior culturally. [My parents] felt very bitter about the fact that they were in the middle of nowhere in Spain, in a place that was really backwards and still recovering from the dictatorship. They saw themselves as cool Gen Xers, who were skateboarders, and even though they were very poor, they were like, “We are still superior because we know about these certain bands” or something, you know? Because of that, my parents sort of doubled down on how Argentinian they were, and I grew up with all this nostalgia for Argentina. We could only afford to go back when I was five years old, and another time when I was maybe 10 and another one when I was 15. It was so expensive to go there, so every time it was this big event. The trips themselves were really boring because my parents would do the classic working-class Argentinian thing, which is go to the coast in the summer, which is in January. So, all I knew was going back to my grandma’s home for a month. That’s it. I never realized so much of Buenos Aires or any of the culture there was just like being on the beach eating choripán and alfajores, you know? My family is culturally very Argentinian. My mom, for example, refused to get Spanish documentation deep into the 2000s because she did not want to be Spanish. I always had this intense relationship to it, all this longing, but it felt very far away from me.
Filmmaker: So how was it making a movie there — coming back as a filmmaker and engaging with Argentina in this way?
Ulman: It’s been amazing. Argentinian filmmakers have been so welcoming of me. And I have so many friends who are filmmakers in Buenos Aires — it’s just been open arms and a very warm welcome. The premiere at Bafici [Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema] was amazing. It was sold out every night.
Filmmaker: The town where you shot the film, San Antonio de Areco, does it have any particular significance to you? Or did you choose it for practical filmmaking reasons?
Ulman: For practical reasons. There were a lot of American actors coming in, and I think it was already too much to ask them to come all the way to South America. So, I looked for a town that was close enough to Buenos Aires and that was a safe place to bring foreigners. The story was originally set in Salta, where my family is from, but I’ve never been there. This really good location scout [told me], “You have to bear in mind that it’s high altitude, and everybody is going to have headaches.” I’m already bringing people from far away, and I didn’t need that level of difficulty. Also, I wanted to go for a place that’s not too specific, a place that’s on the outskirts of a big city in Latin America. All of them kind of look very similar: you have dirt roads, you have dogs, you have horses. So [Areco] was a safe place to bring foreigners. I went for a place that, historically, is kind of posh. Next to where we shot it’s very Ralph Lauren-equestrian. It’s like the first village in in Argentina, and a lot of stories and literature come from there, and the original gauchos. It’s very romantic and whatever. I was like, “Okay, I can bring the foreigners here. I feel confident that they will be comfortable here.”
Filmmaker: Tell me a bit about the camera or the lens that you use for those the opening and closing shots that are so mind bending. What was your intention and what kind of camera did you use for that?
Ulman: I was definitely inspired by early ’90s skate videos, and then I saw something similar in contemporary culture in the way people use TikTok. It’s also very free. People just use this software, CapCut, and do crazy things on it. And then there are all these new cameras. The one you’re talking about is actually a 3D camera that is constantly filming everything, and then in the software, you can decide which angle to use. You can use the flat one, you can use the one that is like a globe. Seeing that online I found it very exciting, new and fresh. I was also very touched by the use of these tiny cameras on animals. There’s this famous cat from China, an indoor/outdoor cat their owner puts a camera on. There’s hours and hours of footage of this cat hanging out outside, relationships with other cats, fighting, climbing trees, and the footage itself is very beautiful. The colors are amazing, and I enjoy that so much that I thought, Why not use that in a film?
Filmmaker: Talk to me about cumbia and the esthetics of the amateur music video in the film. The music is a prominent part of the local culture and of the film.
Ulman: It’s based on two different things. The music itself — what I gave to Chicken [the composer] as an inspiration for the soundtrack is cumbia villera, which originally was very despised by the Buenos Aires elite, but obviously went full circle. Ten years later, you had posh girls with ukuleles making covers of cumbia villera music. For so long, Argentina — not the whole Argentina, but mostly Buenos Aires — was like, “Well, we’re not Latin America. We’re better than that. We’re like Paris.” But then cumbia villera became very famous. The slums have become bigger and bigger and bigger to a point where I would say that maybe half the population of Buenos Aires lives in the slums. It just grew so much that it’s something you can’t ignore anymore. Like, the most famous one has their own McDonald’s inside. That’s how established it is. And I think that’s the one [Diego] Maradona is from. So, you know, it got to a point where they couldn’t deny that that’s part of the culture.
I was always fascinated by how punk cumbia villera is. They intentionally use all the ugliest sounds and keyboards, the ugliest esthetic — like, “We don’t care about high culture, we’re intentionally attacking, intentionally gross, intentionally dirty.” And the lyrics are very dark and violent. So that was one inspiration for the film, and the other one was something that I remember when I was in my early 20s, coming out of high school and going to art school. These music videos from Latin American musicians, a lot of them from Ecuador, like those by Delfín hasta el fin like “Torres Gemelas,” were really popular in Spain in the early days of the internet. Obviously the aesthetics are amazing because they’re so bizarre, but there was also this little thing of mocking the people who are too ignorant to know that what you’re doing is bad, but it’s so bad that it’s good, and it takes the white hipster to repackage it into a cool thing. That’s the inspiration for the band Los Conejitos, which is a real band called Los Conquistadores, and they have that song and they wear those costumes.
Filmmaker: The Americans in the film are kind of the gringos, a little pathetic and dumb, and the locals are one step ahead of them. Is that notion of the ignorant American something that you talked about with your actors?
Ulman: I didn’t want it to be too exaggerated. It’s just based on things I’ve heard people say about Latin America and me correcting them. But also, most people making films about Latin America, especially big films like Roma, it’s always done by the white Mexican who has all this guilt, and it’s this portrayal of the poor cleaner or nanny. I don’t have that experience. I wanted to keep these characters’ agency and treat them like real people with real intelligence and charisma, and just let them be who they are. Instead of who they are to their patrón [boss]. Everyone [in the film] has some sort of agency or capabilities of being naughty and bad. Mateo, for example, I let him improvise and tell his own stories about how much of a party monster he is. I think it’s important to show that, sure, he had a disability that is awful, and he did pass away, sadly, because people with progeria die very young, but he’s not a victim. He has a life, he’s funny, he loves dancing. Why not show all these things too? The same with Manchi (Camila del Campo) — it’s heartbreaking when she gets rejected, but she’s also a pretty strong character, she’s talented and gorgeous. You root for her.
Filmmaker: Did you always know that you were going to play Elena, that you were going to be sort of this bridge between the Americans and the locals?
Ulman: Yeah, because it’s kind of like a boring character, too. [laughs] I don’t think I would offer that character to an actor, you know? [The character] is kind of a crutch for all the other actors. It gave me the possibility to direct within the scenes because I’m connecting to the Argentinians. A lot of the Argentinian cast did not speak English, so me being in the scenes, connecting people, gave the opportunity to do it openly instead of from behind the camera.
Filmmaker: Like you, Elena was born in Argentina but migrated. She doesn’t feel that she belongs – she’s not as Argentinian as some of the locals, but she also knows she’s not American. Was that an intention in terms of your own feelings about yourself as being in between these worlds?
Ulman: Yes and no. I don’t feel that personally attached to the character. It’s definitely a character. I feel more connected to Manchi. I’ve been in that situation way more times than I’ve been in the position of Elena, because I never worked for a company like [the production company in the film]. I have never been a pawn to a system in that way. I don’t agree with how Elena goes about what she’s doing. She’s a character based on a lot of people that I know who would want something different in their lives but can’t really afford it. I feel like there’s such a system based in youth culture that the next thing you know, you’re in your mid 30s, and you don’t even have health insurance, and you’re like, “Oh, shit, I would love to have a family. How do I even start that if I live in Brooklyn and have housemates?” They are too depressed to even process the information of what’s going on around them. I think that’s when real, pure evil happens, when people are too tired to do anything about anything and are just doing their job. There’s so much evil done because people are just doing their job, and that’s the character that Elena is.
Filmmaker: In your first movie, El Planeta, you acted with your mom. What changed in Magic Farm now that you were working with well known actors?
Ulman: Well, it was the same because my mom is such a diva, she kind of like prepped me for everything. The big difference was not that they were big actors but the amount of them. The fact that it was an ensemble cast really took a toll on me. Also, the scale in general because, you know, I have a disability. I have a problem with my legs. In El Planeta, my assistant director, Carmen Roca Igual, helped me a lot by managing the schedule – like, “Okay, this is an intense scene,” then [the next scene] I’d be sitting down or not in front of the camera. Whereas in this case, we tried to prioritize that but couldn’t. It was too big a production to that that into account, so it was exhausting. And because I was in front of the camera, sometimes I wasn’t able to be as much of a director as I wanted to be for my actors. But the big difference was mostly scale,
Filmmaker: Directing them wasn’t that different than directing your mother.
Ulman: Yeah. But Marita [in Magic Farm] is my real grandma. She’s an eccentric as well, and she really wanted to be in the film. She got to sing the song made about God and stuff that she likes. She’s actually an evangelical person who writes poems and songs and sings as church.
Filmmaker: Have you noticed any difference in the reaction playing the film in the U.S. and in Latin America? Are audiences in the two cultures noticing different things or reacting differently?
Ulman: Absolutely. People in Europe love the film. The Berlin reception was amazing. People laughed so hard. And Latin Americans tend to really love the film. I feel the best audience is the one from the U.S. that [knows] the background story of VICE and speaks both languages. They catch all the jokes in English and Spanish. It definitely played really well in Bafici. They caught other jokes that are very specific to Argentina. At the premiere in L.A., a lot of Spanish-speaking people and people from Latin America, or who have a connection to Latin America, loved it. The reception at Sundance was good, but I think there weren’t enough Latinos and foreigners, and I think a lot of people maybe felt uncomfortable about the representation in the film. Like, “You’re just making it look too ugly,” you know? But it’s like, no, it looks like that. Why am I not allowed to show the Argentina I know instead of a sanitized version of it? I respect more the opinion, I think, from people that are Latin American or have a connection to Latin America than people who’s never been there.
Filmmaker: I also wonder how Americans, or white Americans, might feel about it. Are they conscious enough of how they’re being depicted as a little bit clueless?
Ulman: I think a lot of people at Sundance felt offended. They were like, “Oh, we’re not like that.” But it’s okay.
Filmmaker: Will your next film be in Spain, Argentina or the U.S.? Or go back and forth?
Ulman: In Spain and the one after in the U.S., because I really want to shoot here because I’ve been here for more than ten years.
