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Back in 2015, in what already feels like a slightly different era of the Venice Film Festival — currently on a roll of crowning big-name Oscar players — Venezuelan filmmaker Lorenzo Vigas won the Golden Lion for his debut feature “From Afar.” A small, subtle queer relationship study, riddled with ambiguity, it never made quite the impression it deserved to on the post-festival art-house circuit. (Its total U.S. box office was in the low five figures.) That was our loss more than his, and for his superb second narrative feature, Vigas shows no inclination to compromise: “The Box” may see him relocating to Mexico, but it’s otherwise wholly of a piece with his debut in its terse, cut-to-the-quick refinement, its loaded, exquisitely composed images, and its fixation on shifting, complex man-versus-boy dynamics.
Though it’s ultimately no easier a sell than “From Afar,” there’s more of a heated genre thrust...
Though it’s ultimately no easier a sell than “From Afar,” there’s more of a heated genre thrust...
- 9/7/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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The first trailer for Venice competition title “La Caja” (The Box) has landed. The film is by Lorenzo Vigas, who won the Venice Golden Lion in 2015 for “Desde allá” (From Afar).
The film follows Hatzin, a young teenager from Mexico City who travels to collect the remains of his father, which have been found in a communal grave amid the huge skies and empty landscape of Northern Mexico. But a casual encounter with a man who shares a physical resemblance with his father fills him with doubts and hope about his parent’s true whereabouts.
Vigas’ 2004 short film “Los elefantes nunca olvidan” (Elephants Never Forget), which premiered at the Cannes Critics’ Week, was the first part of of a fiction trilogy that builds on the theme of the father figure. The second part was “Desde allá.” “La Caja” completes the trilogy.
In 2016, at the Venice Film Festival, Vigas presented a feature documentary about his father,...
The film follows Hatzin, a young teenager from Mexico City who travels to collect the remains of his father, which have been found in a communal grave amid the huge skies and empty landscape of Northern Mexico. But a casual encounter with a man who shares a physical resemblance with his father fills him with doubts and hope about his parent’s true whereabouts.
Vigas’ 2004 short film “Los elefantes nunca olvidan” (Elephants Never Forget), which premiered at the Cannes Critics’ Week, was the first part of of a fiction trilogy that builds on the theme of the father figure. The second part was “Desde allá.” “La Caja” completes the trilogy.
In 2016, at the Venice Film Festival, Vigas presented a feature documentary about his father,...
- 9/3/2021
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
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