[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]The Weak Ones
Official Selection Feature Mexico
Dir. Eduardo Giralt Brun & Raúl Rico
The Richter Scale says: Any adventure can seem epic when done right. If the characters are memorable enough, the environment specific enough and the events unique enough, even a simple trip through Sinaloa to an island can be exciting and life-changing. The Weak Ones is told like an epic is told, starting with the Font used for the credits and the fact that it’s divided into chapters. Filmmakers Eduardo Giralt Brun and Raul Rico (who also wrote it) handle a crude and contemplative tone with a surreal component that allows for characters and images that one wouldn’t necessarily see in a film of this tone, with other elements that connect directly to the reality of this situation (including a scene in English where a gringo sits next to our protagonist and says that 13-year-olds are the biggest problem in Mexico, one of those people who existed way before this political climate, but have become more visible lately).
José Luis Lizárraga plays Víctor, a farmer from Sinaloa whom we don’t know a lot about, outside of the fact that he’s lonely, he really loves his dogs and baseball. The story begins in a bar when someone stains the jersey of a 13-year-old, which has his nickname, “Selfie”, written on it. This boy believes Víctor did it and as pay back, he and his gang kill his dogs. Víctor takes his gun, rides his pick-up truck and looks for this kid to kill him. From there on out we have an episodic journey in which Víctor asks different people, something who seem to come from our world and others who look like they came out of a David Lynch film, not knowing whether they are telling the truth. More than a story, this film is an exercise in atmosphere, portraying what life in Sinaloa is for these characters, in tight shots, some very talkative (including a tattoo artist who talks about how he once tattooed a dismembered arm), and other that talk about as much as our lead.
The movie is aesthetically very interesting in terms of the contrast it does between the real and the surreal. Diego Rodríguez García is the cinematographer and his way of capturing the images as if it were a documentary, with cold, almost grey tones, which makes the aesthetic something too depressing to be real. There’s rarely more than one person in the shot, even when we see someone from the back of the head, which gives it a disorienting feel and even leaves certain narrative details vague. Therefore it is not a very satisfying film for a mainstream audience, but for someone for looking something stranger, it’s a good choice.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Pamparios
Selección Oficial Largometraje México
Dir. Florian Seufert
The Richter Scale says: This one’s going to be shorter than usual, because it’s such a personal experience that it must be experienced.
The line between narrative and documentary filmmaking appears to be very clear, but there are filmmakers who consistently look for ways to blur it, creating projects that bring together elements of both. Florian Seufert uses his feature debut to explore a personal experience, presenting a lead that is clearly an alter ego of himself and taking us to places, traditions and rituals he tries to be a part of, but eventually apart from them. Florian Seufert tells the story and puts himself in the lead role. We meet him at a party that celebrates two things: his birthday and his parents’ anniversary, a party he feels disconnected from and one in which he has conversations trying to figure out his life, including a conversation with his girlfriend who would like to have a family with him.
The second part of the movie chronicles the life of the Huicholes, the part that feels more like a documentary. Aesthetically, it feels like something out of the Discovery Channel, which feels deliberate in the way Florian disconnects it from the first part of the film, a place where one feels that narrative characters don’t belong, which is exactly what Florian feels like in this story. This is a different type of cinema, one that will offer an experience that I’m sure someone will be able to describe better than me. I’ll simply leave you with something the filmmaker said: “For my first feature, I felt that I had to put myself in front of camera, in order to allow me to shoot the life of other persons in the future.”
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