Tremors

The pursuit of happiness comes at a high price in Jayro Bustamante's Tremors. The film completes his trilogy about social outcasts in Guatemala, and follows Pablo, a man from an upper class family who falls in love with a man from the working class. Their love upends Pablo's relationship to his family and throws him into deep conflict with the Evangelical Christian church that he has attended for years. The strong pressure that is so often put upon queer people is depicted with great emotional strength in Tremors, an intelligent, gripping, and clever film that manages to convey deep structures of a society through the depiction of small, intimate details.

Jayro Bustamante (f. 1977) from Guatemala has worked and studied film in several countries, and got his international breakthrough in 2015 with Ixcanul, which screened at film festivals all over the world. Bustamante has later made two more feature films which complete his trilogy of films about the ills of modern Guatemala. He is one of the directors in focus at this year's festival.