The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

The tragedy and the glory of the Panamanian bid for the Oscars

2022-01-28T03:11:01.890Z


With 'Plaza Catedral', Abner Benaim is up for the award for best international film. The film portrays the cruelty of Latin American inequality, an evil that reached the leading actor, a black teenager murdered during the pandemic


Panama is not usually the epicenter of Latin American cinema like Mexico or Argentina, and yet director Abner Benaim (Panama City, 50 years old) has managed to make the small Central American country stand up for the region.

His last feature film,

Plaza Catedral

, was one of the two Latin American films shortlisted for the Oscars this year in the category of Best International Film (among the 15

shortlists

, it is only accompanied by the Mexican

Noche de Fuego

).

On February 8 it will be known if one of the two manage to be among the five nominees, and in March the winners will be known.

Plaza Catedral

is a Panamanian film, but with a cross-cutting theme throughout the continent: inequality and urban violence.

It could have been filmed in the streets of Rio de Janeiro or Bogotá, but the director focused his camera first on the towering skyscrapers of Panama City by the sea where wealthy families see poor neighborhoods from their ivory towers as if were a painting and not a tragedy.

A wealthy, white architect named Alicia (played by Mexican actress Ilse Salas, who worked with Alonso Ruizpalacios in

Güeros

and

Museo

) works there, a character who is in deep grief after her son died in an accident.

"I'm dead, dead inside, dead alive," she says in a monologue as she looks down on the city.

But Alicia lives in front of a small plaza, called Catedral, where a 13-year-old Afro-descendant boy nicknamed

Chief

looks after her car for a few pesos and one day asks her for help because someone (a gang, she thinks) wants to kill him.

Alicia reluctantly agrees to help him when she sees him injured one night.

"The film goes beyond the differences between documentary and fiction," Benaim tells EL PAÍS when commenting on the boy's tragic fate. Almost a year and a half after filming, the fiction left the screen. Fernando Xavier De Casta, the natural actor who played

Chief

, was shot and killed one night in June 2021 in Panama City. The boy did not get to see the movie. In October 2021, he won the Best Actor award at the Guadalajara Film Festival. "He died like so many other children who die daily in our beloved Latin America, and who die anonymously," said the director when he received the award with emotion.

Benaim's previous films had been mostly documentaries and had also been submitted by his country for the Oscars.

Invasión

, from 2014, is about the intervention of the United States Government in 1989 to overthrow General Manuel Noriega.

My name is not Rubén Blades

, from 2018, is a documentary about the famous salsa singer, who is now a producer for

Plaza Catedral

.

Invasion

was the first film that we sent to the Oscars in the history of Panama, and this is the first one that remains

shortlisted

”, proudly tells the pioneering director about his new film in this interview.

Panamanian film director Abner Benaim. Apertura Films

Ask.

How did the idea for this film come about?

Answer.

The idea is born from a place as a basic good, which is that I lived in that apartment, the one that looks towards the Plaza Catedral, and I had conversations with a man who looked after cars below.

We talked for 10 or 15 minutes, or an hour, and I decided that this place would be the starting point.

From there one adds things.

A friend who lived in the same neighborhood told me one day that a man from the street who took care of cars came to him bleeding – because there are many who take care of cars there – and took him to the hospital.

Thus, little by little the story unfolded.

But what I really wanted was to talk about two people who need each other and who don't say it, they don't want to accept it.

I wanted to explore that theme of not asking for help, or asking too late, or not offering help to the other.

The theme of solidarity.

P.

Why then focus on the issue of violence against children and not against adults?

R.

It seemed to me the most urgent issue.

I hear a lot of conversations from people who have the ability to make a change, from people who are on the side of privilege.

There are always things said about adults to blame them, like 'he was given every chance and look how it turned out'.

But when you see a child involved in issues of violence, it is easier to show that society is wrong.

The problem is of everybody.

You can't blame a kid for, say, instead of going to play soccer, he picks up a gun.

That's what they gave him in his neighborhood.

Something must be done so that this is not the case, but it is not the child's fault.

For the character of

Chief

, I sat down with a social worker and said, 'I'm doing this movie, I have this character, and I'm a little concerned that I'm overreacting.

Because you are a street kid who left his house, he is affiliated with a gang, the stepfather is a policeman and he abuses his sister'.

And the social worker tells me: 'It's not too much, you missed that the neighbor is on drugs and that the real dad is in jail or dead.'

That's how it is here, in Colombia, or in Mexico.

They are problems that are so serious and that in Panama, as it is such a small country, we see it next to us.

As people, many of us put on a blindfold so as not to see, in order to live a life in peace.

But one makes an effort in the cinema to send a message that, although I don't want it to be moralistic, can change the perception.

Q.

You chose the character of

Chief

in the film to live in an iconic neighborhood in Panama City called El Chorrillo. What does that area symbolize?

R. It is the same neighborhood where the invasion [of the United States in 1989] took place.

El Chorrillo is a popular neighborhood that has had many poverty problems and has also had a lot of bad names, because a lot of crime has come out of it.

It is on the coast, next to San Felipe, which is the neighborhood that was renovated and that is where the presidency is, where all the government palaces, the National Theater and the entire historic center are.

And El Chorrillo is next to all that, but it is very bad.

If you're a tourist walking from one neighborhood to another, it's five minutes, but there are policemen who stop you and tell you 'don't go there'.

It's also very central to Panama culturally, it's the neighborhood where [boxer] Roberto Durán came from, and [musician] Rubén Blades sings from that neighborhood in several songs.

During the invasion it is where Noriega's general headquarters was and that is why they bombed it, razed it to the ground, and burned it down.

Next to the entrance of the Panama Canal is El Chorrillo, in the very heart of Panama.

It passes you by every day and that's why it seemed important to me.

P.

Did you want to cross that border in the film that the police do not allow tourists to cross?

R.

Yes, it is something that I like to do not only in the cinema but in life.

I try not to function according to those borders that are imposed by, let's say, conventions.

When one crosses them, one says, but why is there a border here?

What happened?

Who put it?

Q.

How did you meet the actor who plays

Chief

, Fernando Xavier De Casta?

R. He was a really exceptional child.

In a bit as seen on camera, he had that charisma, that intelligence, that insight.

I connected with him in a very natural way.

We did

casting

in the neighborhood of San Felipe and Santa Ana, they are next to each other in Chorrillo.

He lived in Santa Ana, he came to a

casting

open and caught my eye.

He was just the age I was looking for, which is like a child who wants to grow up.

I really liked how he acted, he didn't change in front of the camera and entered the situations in a very realistic way.

We did a little test, like 2 or 3 minutes, and then a year passed before the film started to be filmed.

We saw another 200 or 250 kids in total and he was definitely the best.

He danced contemporary dance at an academy called

Enlaces

, and that made me feel safe because I understood that he had an already established routine and that it had to do with the arts.

He played soccer, he danced, but he had never acted.

Q. And how did he die?

A. About six months ago they killed him.

What I know is that he was in another neighborhood, which was not his, and that it was around midnight and that he was shot.

The reason?

There are several theories but I don't really know and I don't want to get into a fuss.

What I do know is that in a way he was like a victim of the pandemic itself, because he used to have a very structured life, he danced and went to school.

With the pandemic, he couldn't do either.

And after a while, his grandmother tells me that he practically had to lock him up so he wouldn't go out on the street.

The street got much worse during the pandemic, because there was no money, there was more crime.

And he started dating people who weren't nice.

I don't know how involved he was or not, but he did die in a very violent way.

What I do know, and what I understood from having met him,

is that before I was saved from that world.

I think the pandemic in a way took it away.

The last time we talked he was happy because he had signed up for a technical school where they were going to teach him to be a diver and an underwater mechanic, and that he was going to make a lot of money doing it.

Still from the film 'Plaza Catedral'. APERTURA FILMS

Q.

It is shocking that his fate ended up being so similar to that of the boy in the movie

R.

It is very rare and it is very strong.

When his grandmother saw the movie she told me 'but that's like real life, what happened there?'

Q.

Your film is also about opulence and wealth starting with filming the luxury skyscrapers in the city that you see in the opening scenes.

R.

Skyscrapers represent many things, but not necessarily something negative, but they are simply impressive.

If we as a society can do this, then we could do a lot more too.

But yes, about the symbol you mention, that I get on the highest place in the city, because when you get on the highest place you also isolate yourself from what is below.

You do not see well.

In that first shot you can see the neighborhood, El Chorrillo, but it is seen as part of the landscape.

So when you see things from afar and as part of the landscape, everything looks nice, like a model.

Q.

On which of these two sides of Panama did you grow up?

R.

First with my family we lived in a house but then in one of these buildings.

So I was totally on the side of the architect, it was the world that I knew.

The truth is, the vast majority of my childhood was that world, as with things quite well and in order, and always seeing that there was another world beyond.

My mother was a psychoanalyst and she always volunteered in support groups for pregnant girls, they did group therapy.

A couple of times I went to see her, to record her sessions as a volunteer, and I began to understand these worlds.

Then especially making the documentaries I have gotten into everywhere and talked to all kinds of people in Panama, from the worst prisons to the worst neighborhoods and at any time.

The camera in that sense is a good excuse to come and talk.

And the film is told from the side of privilege, the side of the protagonist who comes from privilege.

I didn't want to tell something as if I were from the neighborhood.

Because those things to me like no, they smell bad to me.

I prefer to tell what I know well, and even if it is told from that point of view, tell it.

It was an option to go in from the child's point of view but I didn't feel as comfortable handling the details.

Q.

How difficult is it to make movies in Panama?

A.

The first movie I ever did, a comedy called

Chance

(2009), was the first movie made in 60 years to hit theaters.

Before there was nothing.

There was no film fund, there was no film law, there was no festival, there was nothing.

There was a small group of people called Asocine, a Foundation, that we are still very active and that is starting to manage laws and stuff.

But it was done by lung, crazy.

And with good people, yes, from the first film what I did was surround myself with people who did have experience, with Mexicans and Colombians and also with many Panamanians.

Afterwards, I stayed behind making documentaries, mostly, but I was also very active with the guilds. Right now there is a film fund, there is a very good film festival that has been running for ten years. The cinema fund works very well, every year it funds six new films and three development films. Today there are things happening, there is a film law that is improving there. And there are also many people now interested. When I said before that I was going to make a film, it was like I was crazy. Totally crazy. But now people see it as a possibility. Well, it's not easy, but the beauty of a country where there isn't much…is that there is a lot of good will. Many things are missing, but there is also plenty of desire to do.

Subscribe here

to the EL PAÍS América

newsletter

and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-01-28

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-01T18:42:35.499Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.