Santoalla

A real-life mystery lies at the center of this documentary about idealistic Dutch couple Martin and Margo Verfondern, modern day hippies who left their home in Amsterdam in the 1990s to live off the land in their own Eden in the mountains of Northern Spain. The locale was chosen for its isolation, wild beauty, and thriving forests, and this urban couple takes to farming with a passion. The Rodríguez family, their only neighbors, have been working their land for generations and now the two sons tend the fields for their elderly parents. All seem to co-exist well enough but keep to themselves. Then Martin disappears in 2010 and European immigrant Margo, who is unwilling to leave, becomes deeply suspicious of her Spanish neighbors. Using interviews and archival video footage (Martin started documenting his neighbors as tensions built), filmmakers Andrew Becker and Daniel Mehrer use the existential mystery here as a frame to examine how cultural mistrust is transformed into outright conflict (the mystery is ultimately solved in the final minutes, recasting the claims of its subjects in a new light). This is the kind of documentary that is less about the ostensible subject matter (what happened to Martin) and more about telling a unique story with many strands: the idealism of a couple embracing an old way of life, the failing economies of small villages, the mistrust of outsiders, and the complications of human nature. Beautifully shot and quite compelling, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)