Caballerango

Caballerango (Horse Wrangler) is a 2018 Mexican documentary film, director Juan Pablo González's debut feature. It's a portrait of residents of Milpillas in Los Altos de Jalisco as they grapple with the sudden death of a young horse wrangler named Nando. The editing alternates wide shots of landscape and community with more intimate scenes where the director, a native of the region himself, asks questions of those onscreen. Gradually, Nando's death starts to look like it might have been a suicide. It also becomes clear that the community's still reeling from the loss of several other young people. The mysterious circumstances of their demise dovetail with globalization's effects on the community: a drop in farming jobs and population exodus from the region. The film expands upon material that González's Cannes Critics' Week short, "¿Por qué el recuerdo?" ("The Solitude of Memory"), previously broached. It displays dimensions of slow cinema and includes only 37 shots across its 62-minute duration.

The film's production occurred between 2013 and 2017, and it received support from the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Austin Film Society, and the California Institute of the Arts, where González is a professor.