All About Asado

Asado is the Argentine tradition of cooking meat over fire. This documentary takes it not as a dish but as a ritual: who lights the fire, who carves, who speaks and when, which cut goes in what order. It is one of the most direct ways the country tells itself about itself. Directed together by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, the film moves between road movie, documentary and fiction. The telling does not sanctify the tradition; on the contrary, it takes apart the myths and the romantic account around it with a needling look. Butchers, cooks, academics and ordinary people speak in it. Andrés Duprat wrote the script. What comes out is a national identity described by looking at meat.