Timo Salminen is best known for his long time artistic collaboration with Aki Kaurismäki. This is his second collaboration with Argentine auteur Lisandro Alonso following Jauja, also including actor Viggo Mortensen. Eureka is an incredible cinematographical acchivment, referencing film history and a meditative and extremely rich and diverse visual language.
Opening in a dusty archetypical western town, with an archetypical cowboy, Viggo Mortensen, on an archetypical revenge mission. But wait... this is 'just' a film within the film, which then transports the viewer to South Dakota’s contemporary Pine Ridge Reservation, where native police officer Aliana is confronted by the consequences—violence, public drunkenness—of grinding poverty.
As the triptych unfolds, each temporal and spatial shift provokes metaphysical questions about the colonial influence on native peoples and the ever-present tensions between indigeneity and the Western world.
"Pure arthouse bliss. It’s stunning." — David Fear, Rolling Stone
"Bristles with agile ideas and inventive image-making... its elasticity of form and narrative perhaps alluding to a history forever repeating and doubling back onto itself." — Guy Lodge, Variety