“A moving story of fragile connection
across social divides... poignant.
”
PLAZA CATEDRAL
A film by Abner Benaim
(Panama/Mexico/Colombia, 2021, 94 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
With Ilse Salas, Fernando Xavier De Casta, Manolo Cardona.
Shortlisted for the Oscars in the International Feature category, the second fiction film by Panamanian director Abner Benaim (Invasion, Ruben Blades Is Not My Name) stars Mexican actress Ilse Salas (Güeros, The Good Girls) as Alicia, a woman whose seemingly perfect life was turned upside-down by the sudden death of her six-year-old son. Alicia’s grief is plagued by guilt, which has made her disassociate from society, from married life, and from herself. Now she lives in the Old Quarter of Panama City, a rich colonial enclave surrounded by the city’s poorest neighborhoods. There she meets Chief (Fernando Xavier De Casta), a street-smart 13-year-old who takes care of cars in front of her apartment and insists on getting paid for his job. Alicia keeps a safe distance from him, until one night Chief arrives at Alicia’s apartment bleeding from a gunshot wound and begs her to let him inside. Winner of the Best Actor and Best Actress Awards at the Guadalajara Film Festival, Plaza Catedral questions how far each of us would go to help a stranger.
In a heartbreaking turn that substantiates the reality of gun violence addressed on screen, the film’s young protagonist was shot to death just months before the release of the film. “Reality intruded upon the film in the most tragic way,” said Benaim. “Fernando’s untimely death is harrowingly symbolic of a fractured society driven by violence and has become an inexorable part of Plaza Catedral‘s message.”
Sunday, January 23, 6pm
Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY
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