Argentine director Lisandro Alonso's career is continuing to grow with his latest movie "Jauja" opening in the New York Film Festival on Tuesday.

"I have a feeling or a dream and I put it in the film," Alonso told Wall Street Journal, adding that his favorite movies are a puzzle. "You don't know what is happening, but it's happening."

The 39-year-old director is 2014's filmmaker-in-residence at the festival. He was granted the honor because "Jauja" was internationally praised after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

"Everything's happening here," Alonso said. "That's why I'm so happy about the opportunity they gave me. I'm here to learn and see if there's any way to discover tools to make a new film."

The movie is Alonso's fifth and features his first celebrity cast member ever, Viggo Mortensen, best known for playing Aragorn in "Lord of the Rings." The two met at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival.

"There is a tranquil and primitively wise quality to his way of working that comes across in his movies, in their landscapes and their soundscapes," Mortensen said of his director.

Mortensen plays a Danish general who gets lost while looking for his daughter in the 19th century. He winds up in "Jauja," a sort of utopia.

"It was a real city in Peru," Alonso explained. "When all the Spanish guys arrived to our continent, they called it the Land of Plenty, or El Dorado. But actually it was not like that, and they used the name to get more Spanish guys to take the boat."

Alonso's first movie, "Freedom," also premiered at Cannes, winning attention from Film Society board members.

"He seemed like the right person," Lesli Klainberg, Film Society executive director, said. "He's not a typical filmmaker. He's not coming here to write a script, because he doesn't really use a script in that more formal sense. He was looking to do the research he would normally do for his projects."

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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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