British-Argentine filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland has always been interested in hands and touch, but in her new film, “Collective Monologue,” she shifts her focus beyond human appendages. Her focus on the tactile interactions between caretaker Maca and the animals at Buenos Aires Eco-Park, often framed by the park’s fences, reveals a tension between the radical acts of care and the politics of captivity inherent in institutions like zoos.

“My interest in hands is about process, about labor, about tools,” Rinland tells Variety after a press screening of the film’s world premiere in Locarno. Her multidisciplinary career as an artist, which also includes bookmaking and installation work, has always focused on alternative modes of perception. The films she makes and the tools she uses come to her organically. In her own words, “They’re things I like and things I want to see.”

Her short film “Expression of the Sightless” (2015) observes a blind man experiencing a statue through the sensation of touch, and in “Ý Berá – Bright Waters” (2016) she questions whether it is possible to adopt an animal's perspective through filmmaking.

In “Collective Monologue,” interspecies touch takes on a different meaning as labor becomes entwined with care. “There’s a moment of touch between Maca and Venus, one of the howler monkeys, where Maca’s hair becomes Venus’ hair. In a way, by fusing together, they become intertwined bodies.”