SANTOALLA

High in the northwest Spanish hills lies the nearly abandoned hamlet of Santoalla. Years ago, a ruddy Dutchman named Martin and his wife Margo threw off the shackles of their bourgeois existence, bought a camper van, and traveled through Europe looking for a place to live off the land in freedom. They seemed to have found it in Santoalla. But then things started going wrong. A fascinating documentary about strangers in paradise, SANTOALLA weaves powerful archival material through interviews. The only other inhabitants of the crumbling village are an elderly couple with two grown sons. Hardened folk who till the soil, they oppose their new neighbors’ plans to ready their property for agritourism. Indeed, the Galician and Dutch mentalities seem to clash. Martin, always an activist, films his adversaries, hoping to catch them engaging in ecological misdemeanors and illegal trespassing. During strife over common land, he sues them, and wins. Two months later, he completely disappears. Margo continues to labor alone, hoping for Martin’s return. This poignant film is both a true crime story and an elegy to a romantic dream. (In English, Spanish, and Galician with subtitles) —B.B.