Anhell69
Theo Montoya
The portrait of a young, queer generation in a Colombia marked by violence and repression, told as a real-life ghost story in atmospheric and morbid images.
Anhell69
Anhell69
Theo Montoya
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Colombia,
France,
Germany,
Romania
2022
75 minutes
Spanish
Subtitles:
English
Theo Montoya draws on casting outtakes, melancholy observations of daily life and decadent party impressions from his friends to create a morbid and yet tender portrait of a young, queer generation in Colombia. In a country marked by violence and repression they can hardly imagine their future, but maintain a close, almost loving relationship with death.
This was meant to be a fiction film: a ghost story in which the dead no longer find cemetery space and consequently coexist with the living, including having sexual relationships – which the state rigorously forbids and persecutes. A clandestine nocturnal subculture emerges where erotic desires for which daylight means annihilation can be acted out. A week after Montoya found his leading actor for the project, the latter died of a heroin overdose. More deaths among his friends follow. They are the ghosts haunting the film that was ultimately made. It retains its dystopian character, but the dangers it portrays are quite real: For these young people, they are part of everyday life in Medellín, which is still deep in the shadow of Pablo Escobar and where the search for pleasure and human warmth takes one through labyrinthine abysses.
Credits
Director
Theo Montoya
Script
Theo Montoya
Cinematographer
Theo Montoya
Editor
Matthieu Taponier, Delia Oniga, Theo Montoya
Producer
Theo Montoya, Juan Pablo Castrillón, Bianca Oana, David Hurst
Co-Producer
Balthasar Busmann, Maximilian Haslberger
Sound
Eloisa Arcila Fernandez, Estephany Cano
Sound Design
Marius Leftărache, Victor Miu
Score
Vlad Feneșan, Marius Leftărache
Winner of:
Golden Dove (International Competition)
