Julio & Carol: Explorers of the Cosmoroute is a new documentary that retraces a tragic and inspiring voyage of two artists at the end of their lives.
When an iconic writer, Julio Cortazar, and his young Canadian wife fall terminally ill from a mysterious disease, they embark on a strange and romantic road trip across France. The lovers spent 33 days living on the side of a highway, writing about their journey as if they were great explorers, immortalizing their travels in their co-written book, Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, a hilarious, yet moving, collection of essays, poems and short stories about life on the road and beyond.
In an upcoming film, Tobin Dalrymple combines the book’s poetic and sublime passages with new animations and photography to bring life to its pages. Modern day interviews with friends and family help piece together the fairy-tale romance of Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop that led to the making of their surreal, autobiographical master piece.
An inspirational journey right up until the end — with the tragic loss of one of the authors — Julio & Carol: Explorers of the Cosmoroute leaves us an urgent message to avoid conventional paths, and follow your deepest dreams.
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"Anyone who doesn’t read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease, which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder … and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair." (Pablo Neruda)