FROM AFAR
12:30 2:30 4:40 7:00 9:15
Final Day - Tuesday, June 21
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY LORENZO VIGAS
An intense and mysterious everyman, Chilean actor Alfredo Castro has become the compelling face of South American art-house cinema, starring in NO, POST MORTEM, TONY MANERO, and, most recently, THE CLUB. Last summer, a provocative debut feature from Venezuela, FROM AFAR, won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. Writes Guy Lodge in Variety: “Looking, not touching, is the act of choice for a sexually wary gay man in FROM AFAR, and his hands-off approach is shared by the expert storytelling in (this) pristinely poised but deeply felt debut feature… This (is a) smart, unsensationalized examination of the slow-blossoming relationship between a middle-aged loner and a young street tough. Star Alfredo Castro gives a veritable master class in fine-point anguish. (The film) marks out Lorenzo Vigas as one of Latin American cinema’s more auspicious arrivals of recent years.”
VENEZUELA • 2015 • 90 MINS. • IN SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES • STRAND RELEASING
Reviews
“Deliberately detached in its observational style, yet as probing, subtle and affecting as any psychological drama could wish to be, this is an elliptical film that trusts its audience enough to peel away exposition and unnecessary dialogue, uncovering rich layers of ambiguity. (The film) recalls the dynamics of a Harold Pinter play. A mesmerizing story. Neither a coming-out film nor a commentary on anti-gay discrimination. Rather, it’s a study of one particular relationship with its own indefinable, constantly changing rules. A work of bracing maturity and jagged sensuality. Tender and harsh.”
– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
“A tightly clenched fist of a film. Heralds the arrival of a new talent in Lorenzo Vigas. (A) rigorously controlled, glacially paced, willfully enigmatic film. The deliberate approach and the mastery of its not-quite-explicable atmosphere of disconnect and fatalism suggest that Vigas has arrived as a director of note fully formed. A magnificently subtle, internalized performance from Castro, which plays off Silva’s more jittery, externalized turn to quiet perfection. (An) awkward waltz of need, desire and disgust.”
– Jessica Kiang, The Playlist / IndieWire