Once again, Kelly Reichardt returns to her well-known Pacific Northwest region (including the state of Oregon, which has been her home for a couple of years and has served as location for many of her movies since “Old Joy” in 2006), in order to tell a story that congregates some of the most striking aspects of her work, which constitutes a unique experiment in contemporary north-american cinema and its industry. In “First Cow”, we find, among other characteristics of her filmography, America’s founding myths, the representation of male friendship, an everyday life pace, and the vastness of rural America. The story, based on “The Half of Life”, a short story by Jon Raymond (a regular collaborator of the filmmaker), takes place during the first decades of the 19th century, and depicts the unlikely friendship between two men (a former north-american chef and a chinese immigrant on the run) who look for fortune in that remote landscape. Their common interests include a possible partnership in a pastry enterprise, and the region’s only dairy cow, an object of exotic fascination owned by a wealthy local landowner. The duo plots a plan: in the dead of night, they will try to milk the cow with the purpose of baking delicious butter scones, which quickly become a local sensation. “First Cow” is a modern contemplative western, with a slow pace and a careful look towards communities and nature, with lonely characters in remote landscapes on the margins of society, a harsh view of the Old West now dominated by the relentless grasp of capitalism. Kelly Reichardt is an essential name in independent north-american cinema, a filmmaker of the resistance and of those marginalized by the system, of small town America and vast landscapes, locations she uses in minimalist narratives in which the most perverse aspects of capitalist liberalism stand out. She visited Curtas Vila do Conde in 2014, when she was the festival’s filmmaker In Focus, presenting all her features to date, from “River of Grass” (1994) to “Night Moves” (2013). In 2017, Curtas Vila do Conde returned to Reichardt’s filmography, with the portuguese premiere of “Certain Women”. (MD)