Fireworks Logo

Trailers...

  • Crime Scene Berlin: Nightlife Killer
  • Stress Positions
  • Fisherman's Daughter (The)
  • Monster of Many Noses (The)
  • Shadow of the Sun (The)
  • Lessons of Tolerance
  • Naked Ambition
  • Faceless After Dark
  • Abang Adik
  • Barber
  • Klimakteriet
  • Extremely Unique Dynamic
  • Becoming Karl Lagerfeld
  • Lady Like
  • León
  • I Wish You All the Best
  • I Don't Know Who You Are
  • Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field
  • 5 nanomoles - the Olympic dream of a trans woman
  • Live Like There is Tomorrow
  • Elda and the Monsters
  • Road House
  • Wakhri (One of a Kind)
  • Critical Zone
  • Doppelgängers³
  • Frida
  • Sing Sing
  • Janey
  • Palm Royale
  • Betânia
  • Avant-Drag!
  • Love Alone Can't Make a Child
  • Broken Hearts Trip
  • Vestidas de azul
  • Young Hearts
  • Teaches of Peaches
  • You Promised Me the Sea
  • Reas
  • Malu
  • Lesvia

From Afar

Country: Venezuela | Mexico, Language: Spanish, 90 mins

Original Title

Desde Allá
  • Director: Lorenzo Vigas
  • Writer: Guillermo Arriaga; Lorenzo Vigas
  • Producer: Guillermo Arriaga; Rodolfo Cova

CGiii Comment

A pederast manipulates a gay-4-pay young man who manipulates the pederast, it's a quiet, unsettling film that will leave you...unsettled and provoked.
 
There are few sentiments created...the two main characters are equally reprehensible...but, any  distant trace of sentiment felt is as stable as standing on a shifting sand-bar.
 
Vigas manipulates his audience as well as his characters. Clever.
 
Little is explained, dialogue is minimum...there are unresolved subplots and there is tension. Palpable, unpalatable, uncomfortable tension.
 
Be warned: this is the darkest side of humanity veiled in respectability...it really is chilling...because it's so believable.
 
The final scene - on which the film relies - will/should astound. Some may find it too slow, too quiet...but, you will/should leave From Afar thinking...bad, bad thoughts...and, feeling...used.
 
Wow!

Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

Newcomer Lorenzo Vigas’ first feature explores issues of social stratification through the story of a wealthy man who pays young men to endure a kind of contact-free abuse, only to find unexpected intimacy with one of his companions.

The first feature by accomplished Venezuelan newcomer Lorenzo Vigas, Desde Allá explores the psychology of a man terrified by the prospect of physical contact. This multi-layered film is at once an exploration of frustrated desire and a window onto the incredible social stratification of Caracas.

A denture-maker by profession, Armando (Alfredo Castro) belongs to Caracas' upper classes, but he chooses to live in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood, where he entices young men back to his home with the promise of payment. He only wants to look, not touch, yet the distance he maintains with these men contains its own particular violence — a contact-free abuse.

Armando carries the scars of a troubled childhood, and when he hears that his father has returned to Caracas, long-suppressed anxieties resurface. At the same time, unexpected changes are occurring in his relationship with one of his paid companions, seventeen-year-old Elder (Luis Silva). At first their association was purely transactional, but as the two spend more time together, something begins to emerge between them: an intimacy that neither man is ready for.

Desde Allá speaks to Venezuela's present reality, with a narrative that traverses the disparate social classes comprising the country's capital — from the gated communities of the very rich to the chaos of the downtown neighbourhoods, and out to the poor communities in the monotonous apartment blocks.

Vigas paints an indelible picture of a multi-tiered society, giving resonance and context to his unforgettable story about an impossible friendship between two men.

Diana Sanchez

Cast & Characters

Alfredo Castro as Armando;
Luis Silva as Elder;
Jerico Montilla as Amelia;
Catherina Cardozo as Maria;
Jorge Luis Bosque as Fernando;
Greymer Acosta as Palma;
Auffer Camacho as Mermelada;
Ivan Pena as Yoni;
Joretsis Ibarra as Deysi;
Yeimar Peralta as Yerlin;
Scarlett Jaimes as Yuli;
Ernesto Campos as Kleiber;
Marcos Moreno as Manuel;
Armando Volcanes as Padrino quinceanera;
Jesus Las Rosas as Roca