When walking through Chacao, there is one street that tends to be the busiest. Drivers looking for a stall, pedestrians converging in the same direction. They head to a corner that is a meeting point and a place of enjoyment. It does not have a curious name like those in downtown Caracas that allude to souls, dangers or doctors. If it has one, it was misplaced in memories that put taste, pleasure and tradition before the interests of urban planners and cartographers. It is only the corner of La Danubio, the pastry shop.
Filmmaker Ignacio Castillo Cottin has been a regular since 1989. And it is there, among counters, ovens, dough, pastry creams, strawberries and customers, many customers, where he filmed La Danubio, the documentary that premiered in 2020.
It tells the life of the Kerese family. Mrs. Evelia and her three sons: Pablo, Andrés and Alejandro. They are the ones who took the reins of a business started by their father, Pal Kerese, and that now is not only prosperous and has spread to other areas of Caracas, but has become a tradition in its almost 50 years of existence.
The documentary genre is usually associated with tragedies or vicissitudes, but it also lends itself to comforting stories and, even more so, if they occur in the midst of chaos and grief.
Margot Benacerraf tells Diego Arroyo Gil in the book La Sal de ayer that in recent times very old pains have been revived, but that the youth should know that the country is much more than its historical tragedies. And as if it were a thought that only a few grasp, Ignacio Castillo Cottin takes advantage of this familiar experience to go beyond the uneasiness.
As a good filmmaker, from the first minutes he knows how to introduce his characters and the dynamics that will be present in the following acts. With mischievousness, he even uses the camera, its movements and the music to take from fiction cinema its archetypal references and associate them to some protagonists. The mother as the beginning of everything.
La Danubio honors a character, because a company is life, one in which different people coexist with their successes, encounters and misunderstandings; in which there are so many details that make existences worth telling.
The film shows the varied personalities of the three brothers and the mother, dissimilar, but necessary to concatenate in a machinery that does not stop. Only every December 25th and January 1st there is a break for rest.
It is discovered that there are siblings who have not set foot in each other's house more than twice in 25 years. The bakery, as the only world, is where family and professional life takes place in a worthy dedication to what is undertaken with faith, it is the center of the world.
But they are not the only ones who speak at La Danubio. They pass under the scrutiny of their employees, who describe and scrutinize them. People who have been working there for 10, 15, 20 or more than 30 years. In fact, the children of some of them have joined and are still working in this institution.
The camera goes into the nooks and crannies that the visitor does not see: between ovens and warehouses, the filmmaker goes through the routine that makes the bakery an institution. Work and constancy as pillars of a tradition.
It is said that sight is the most complete sense because through it one can foresee distances and predict tastes. On this occasion, the shots evoke flavors that many will have discovered in the place, such as the famous parchita mousse or the famous ham bread. Others, perhaps unaware of this fervor for the bakery, will be intrigued by a plot that from beginning to end is a journey of heroism in the midst of adversity. All this is reinforced by testimonies of clients such as Rafael Arráiz Lucca or Henrique Lazo, as well as the stories of those who have found in the company the support for social projects or traditions.
The filmmaker also seeks to show the thorns that arise in all human dynamics, but there is such an amenity in which the characters involved resolve their issues, that there is no room for further judgments that undermine the story.
With La Danubio, Ignacio Castillo Cottin returns to the arena after his 2016 film El Inca was censored in Venezuela. And he does not return with a revanchist message, much less with a film of hackneyed questioning about the situation Venezuelans are going through.
His message with La Danubio is much more powerful from the apparent neutrality of his approach. In a country where the word entrepreneur has been demonized, La Danubio is an aesthetic testimony that praises work, risk, discipline, loyalty and family. It is also a record of how people can work together in favor of a project in which not only the entrepreneurs win, but also those who find in the offer a space for urban life, a sign of civilization.
