A Utopian Film That Grew Naturally from a River Island 

“So, have you started casting already? Am I the Tantra yoga instructor?”

1.

A few days of heavy rain had caused the Uruguay River to rise, temporarily submerging the beaches along its tributary near Gualeguaychú. The water, however, had turned crystal clear. After briefly testing its temperature with my old friend Pedro Irigoyen, we plunged into the river, floating on our backs and basking in the comfortable afternoon sunlight.

Those few minutes of swimming in the wild took me back to when we first met each other 10 years ago in Montego Bay, Jamaica. It was the afternoon after Reggae Sumfest 2014 had ended. I had drank myself into oblivion the night before and was carried away by a Dutch girl. By the time I returned to the beachfront resort arranged by the festival organizers, it was already the following afternoon. A quick splash in the Caribbean Sea jolted me back to life, and I found myself sitting on the soft sand, rolling tobacco and daydreaming with Pedro—the first Argentinian I had ever met in real life.

Back then, I was already a jobless wanderer, a full-time traveler drifting across the globe. Pedro, on the other hand, was a music journalist who had spent 15 years at Clarín, Argentina's largest newspaper. He was the embodiment of a Gonzo journalist in practice, effortlessly covering the festival. He slept until he woke up naturally, swam in the sea for a bit, and smoked a cigarette after emerging from the water before returning to his apartment to focus on filing his work for an hour or two.

As for me, I had once dreamed of turning my journeys into a road movie. A producer even locked me in a grand mansion for a month to hash out a script, but nothing came of it. Most of the time, traveling is filled with tedium and emptiness, which is why road movies rarely shine as they often lean more on mood than story. Take that night at the Reggae Sumfest, for example. After I passed out, I had no memory of what happened next. Four years later, when I visited Amsterdam, I tried meeting up with the Dutch girl, only to receive this reply: “I was young and reckless during those years in the Caribbean. I may have done some wild things, but sorry, I don’t actually remember who you are.”

This kind of experience, of course, was never meant to appear in a music festival report, nor would it make the cut as a travel piece for newspaper supplements. But perhaps it could barely pass as material for a road movie. Later, with the complete decline of print media, I lost the platform to which I contributed my writings to, and in 2017, Pedro left his job at Clarín as well. Through further study, he began transitioning into a professional screenwriter.

After our swim in the Gualeguaychú River, we stood on the grassy bank to dry off and started talking about the differences between media writing and screenwriting. “As journalists and media writers, we’ve gotten too good at organizing materials, piecing together well-structured narratives, and crafting ideal stories with a closed loop”, Pedro remarked, sharing his insights. “We’re more like craftsmen now, rather than creators. Writing for film, though, is something entirely different—it’s all about approaching the story from a visual perspective.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “That’s also why so many compelling feature stories in journalism end up being so difficult to adapt into films.”

2.

My experience as a globetrotter has taught me that names ending in “yen” or “yan” often belong to Armenians.

“That isn’t the case for my family, though. My ancestors came from the French Basque region. My family has lived in this little border town (Gualeguaychú) for generations. I, however, was born and raised in Buenos Aires, along with my older and younger brothers. Only in recent years did I fully settle down on a small island back in my hometown,” Pedro explained.

As a former music journalist with extensive experience and connections, Pedro still occasionally organizes small to mid-sized music festivals in Gualeguaychú, which has 100,000 inhabitants. With its expansive green spaces, ranches, campsites, and riverfronts, this vacation town offers a perfect setting for various cultural events. The most internationally renowned among them is the Carnaval del País, held every Saturday from January to February. This magnificent parade of creatively designed floats at the Corsódromo attracts visitors each summer who outnumber the town’s population by four times. It is even considered one of the largest carnivals globally, alongside the Rio de Janeiro Carnival. Because the town is not far from Brazil, Gualeguaychú also boasts samba schools. As a teenager, whenever Pedro returned to his hometown from the capital, he would take samba lessons.

“My ex-wife and I actually met during the carnival, and we had two children, a son and a daughter,” Pedro recounted, sharing an important chapter of his life. The story had a cinematic ring to it. It sounds like the movie "The Rock" where Sean Connery’s character played a veteran who reunites with his daughter after escaping Alcatraz Island. In the movie, Connery’s on-screen daughter says to him, “But I don’t think that we should romanticize what happened between you and [my mother]. Meeting at a bar after a Led Zeppelin concert, head out and I was the result.”

The entire river island and an old, well-established hotel on the river’s west bank are part of Pedro’s mother’s land. The southern half of the island has become a cozy residential area, dotted with vacation homes, while the northern half remains untouched, preserved as a pristine forest. Pedro and his girlfriend live in a modest open-plan house on the island’s southeast side. Every Monday afternoon, she hosts a reading group there. Since the island has no bridge connection, Pedro has to ferry guests back and forth in a small boat.

Doesn’t this sound like the story of a “trust fund hippie” choosing a simple, rebellious lifestyle?

Coincidentally, it was a Monday, and that week’s reading theme was “Don Quixote.” Pedro rowed his boat, taking me and a systems engineer across the water to his home. As we glided along the river, Pedro opened up, “It took me a year to finish my screenplay, and I only recently finalized it. Looking back, I realize that living on this island was essential to creating the story. Every day, I wrote a small section, which my script mentor would review and edit. Sometimes, he’d even suggest scrapping a scene or a character entirely. In the end, a story can’t just emerge fully formed from your imagination—it needs a foundation in real experience.”

3.

More guests arrived at the reading club, ferried across the river together with their contributions of homemade cookies, snacks, hand-rolled tobacco, and various editions of “Don Quixote,” from well-worn paperbacks to ornate hardcovers. After a round of friendly small talk, the group settled in to begin their discussion.

Meanwhile, Pedro took his dog and headed toward the center of the island. Behind the fence stood an enormous, long-neglected family mansion. “This is where the main story of my screenplay takes place,” Pedro said, as he prepared some Mate Tea and rolled a cigarette, ready to narrate his tale.

“Can I mention the general plot without going into too many details?” I asked Pedro two days later, when I was preparing to draft this filmmaker travelogue.

“Go ahead. Write however you like—it’s your freedom,” Pedro replied, unconcerned. “Besides, my script is already registered.”

“Good! Then I won’t be tempted to adapt it into a hundred-episode web series,” I joked.

Still, out of respect for the eventual finished film, I prefer not to reveal too much of the story. Instead, let me just briefly introduce the main characters:

1. A forlorn owner of a desolate, run-down historic hotel (the setting for which is the very white mansion behind us)
2. A mega social media influencer couple famous for their expertise in Tantra yoga
3. A gardener who cares nothing for money but stumbles upon a treasure supposedly hidden by Giuseppe Garibaldi (a military leader of Italy in the 1800s) on the island
4. A beautiful woman who chooses to marry into wealth
5. A once-popular rock star who rose to fame with a single hit for over a decade before falling into obscurity

Through a series of coincidences, their paths intertwine on the island, setting off a chain of intriguing events. The story culminates in a happy ending that balances indie charm with commercial appeal.

The challenge lay in trimming the script. With nearly 130 scenes in the final draft, Pedro knew he needed to make some tough cuts to bring it down to a lean 70 or 80.

“My younger brother, who has years of filming experience, will direct,” Pedro shared with pride. “He’s worked with ESPN extensively and even directed three short films funded by the channel, with its scenes shot all across the world. It even won an Emmy Award. One of them was a documentary on quirky football fields around the world. There’s a tiny island in the Caribbean, much smaller than ours, with nothing but a single football pitch. If the goalie misses a save, the ball goes straight into the ocean!”

Pedro seemed confident that his script would make it to the screen. “No matter what, we’ll shoot it here on the island. There’s a way to film it on a tight budget, and another way if we get more funding. Either way, it’ll happen. My brother’s production team plans to pitch for grants at various film festivals, including the upcoming Mar del Plata at the end of the month.”

Pedro asked me to climb up to the third floor of the mansion and enter a room thick with cobwebs. Stepping out onto the balcony, he gazed out as if he were visualizing how the scenes from his screenplay might look.

“So, have you started casting already? Am I the Tantra yoga instructor?” I joked.

At that moment, a man outside the fence was untying the mooring lines of a small boat by the river, preparing to ferry it across. “That’s the gardener in my story—the one who finds Garibaldi’s hidden treasure in the cesspit,” Pedro said, pointing enthusiastically at the man.

“Are most of your character inspirations drawn from your neighbors on this island?” I asked, intrigued.

“Yes, that’s why I need to stay here,” Pedro elaborated. “I’ve even shared my story with them, so they know what I’m working on.”

With its utopian setting, absurd twists, and musings on money, love, and freedom, his story bore echoes of the early works of Yorgos Lanthimos, the contemporary Greek auteur. Films like “Dogtooth,” “Alps,” and “The Lobster” came to mind as Pedro described his screenplay’s themes and tone.

Pedro has, in fact, written a couple of reviews about Lanthimos on Peliplat, including one titled “The Kindness of Strangers: How Much Does True Freedom Cost, According to Yorgos Lanthimos?” and another, “A Journey into the Soul of Lanthimos.” He admitted that his regular habit of writing weekly reviews for the platform had become a way to discipline himself into watching and studying films seriously. Inevitably, this process had influenced his own storytelling to some extent.

4.

As night fell, the reading group’s discussion about “Don Quixote” came to an end. With a guitar and two hand drums in tow, Pedro gathered his guests by the riverside, where they sang together.

As the title of Radiohead’s “Anyone Can Play Guitar” suggests, soon enough, everyone was taking turns strumming a few songs. After the group warmed up to one another, regional folk songs rang out more loudly. However, the vexing mosquitoes—seizing their moment under the moonlight—joined the party uninvited. Before long, I was itching and swatting so much that I could hardly sit still.

“Mosquitoes are more rampant here than in the capital,” I grumbled, pissed at the buzzing insects around me. “Besides that, do you miss anything about Buenos Aires? The endless music scene?”

“Not at all!” Pedro replied emphatically. “I love this island and the movie stories it inspires in me. Plus, great musicians do perform here in Gualeguaychú. Manu Chao and his famous world music band were here not long ago—they didn’t even stop in Buenos Aires.”

With its overwhelming cultural offerings, city life can indeed lead to decision fatigue. A constant diet of artistic abundance can leave one jaded. Living in a vacation town located a three- to four-hour car ride from the capital gives Pedro the luxury of waiting for special performances by musicians whom he truly adores, making them more valuable. “When I go to a show now, I appreciate it much more,” he explained. “There are too many concerts in the city. People just watch them through a screen as they record everything using their phones. They don’t remember a single carefully crafted solo by the musicians.” A violinist Pedro introduced me to earlier had shared the same sentiment.

It’s not just performances that lure Pedro away from the island, though. As a diehard supporter of Racing Club, he’s willing to row across the river, drive to the bus station, and make a journey to the competition venue to cheer for the team during crucial matches. “Next weekend, I’m heading to Paraguay for the Copa Sudamericana final—Racing against Brazil’s Cruzeiro,” he said with visible excitement.

Coincidentally, I’d just read a chilling tale in “Angels with Dirty Faces,” a classic on Argentine football history. At the end of 1967, Racing became the first Argentine team to win the Intercontinental Cup. Jealous fans of their rival club, Independiente, allegedly used black magic and sneaked into the stadium to bury seven dead black cats. After that, Racing fell into decline, even being relegated to a lower ranking once. The club later performed an exorcism and dug up six cat skeletons. The seventh wasn’t found until the stadium underwent a renovation in 2001. That same season, Racing finally won the league championship—34 years after their last title.

“That story is absolutely true,” Pedro confirmed with the unquenchable fervor of a Racing superfan. “There’s probably a movie or TV show about it already.”

It was time to leave the mosquitoes, the island, and the utopian tales of money, love, and freedom behind. Pedro loosened his boat’s mooring lines as I climbed aboard. As he rowed me away, the group of book club attendees orchestrated a song extempore, weaving a simple harmony of F, G, and C chords, as part of a musical send-off.

“Seamouse who hates cumbia is leaving, so let’s send him off with the cumbia he despises...” they sang as their laughter rang out over the water.