Two Latin American filmmakers won top awards in the Orizzonti competition at the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival: Mexican director David Pablos received the award for Best Film for On the Road / En el camino, while Ecuadorean writer-director Ana Cristina Barragán won the Best Screenplay Award for The Ivy / Hiedra.
Co-produced by Diego Luna and Inna Payán and starring Victor Prieto and Osvaldo Sánchez, On the Road follows Veneno, a rebellious young drifter who frequents roadside diners, where he sleeps with truck drivers. Desperate for a ride, he meets Muñeco, a hardened, solitary driver. He convinces Muñeco to take him deep into the hyper-masculine world of long-haul trucking across northern Mexico. As they travel together and an unexpected intimacy builds between them, shadows from Veneno’s past resurface, putting both their lives at risk.
Barragán’s third feature follows Azucena, a 30-year-old woman who spies on the teenagers of a group home. In their games and sense of brotherhood, she searches for fragments of her own past, driven by a traumatic event that marked her adolescence and left her suspended in time. Her attention centers especially on Julio, a 17-year-old boy. Although their social worlds are far apart, their wounds, shared laughter, and the discovery of one another guide their fraught, Oedipal journey to the rocks of a volcano. There, far from everything, these two characters, marked by absence, are transformed into something else.
In her acceptance speech, Barragán said that making films in Ecuador is only possible through the synchronicity of countless titanic efforts, and added that the award meant so much for Ecuadorean cinema.
The 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival took place August 27 - September 6, 2025.
