From Afar

From Afar won the Golden Lion and was the first Venezuelan film to be represented in the competition at the Venice Film Festival. The film presents superb acting performances by Alfredo Castro (star director Pablo Larraín’s favourite actor) as Armando, a middle aged and shy dental prosthesis maker who pays young boys to undress for him. He himself has a very unclear relationship to his father. At least as good is the young debutant Luis Silva as Elder, a small time crook who eventually develops a kind of relationship with Armando.

With slow and intimate shots you get close to the shame and nervousness that accompanies every meeting between the two main characters. The dialogue is minimal and the atmosphere almost quivers with suppressed emotions and violence during the whole film.

Lorenzo Vigas (1967) was born in the city of Mérida in Venezuela. At the beginning of the 1990’s he studied molecular biology at the University of Tampa, Florida, before he moved to New York and started films studies. After previously making documentaries and short films, From Afar is his first feature film.