Festival opens with a film about corruption, murder and gentrification
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“Such is the Life in the Tropics” (Sin muertos no hay carnaval), the Ecuadoran thriller directed by Sebastián Cordero, opened the annual AFI Latin American Film Festival last week in Silver Spring.
Cordero’s 2016 film presents a portrait of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city. The film starts with bird-watching tourists in a peaceful and quiet forest when suddenly a boy named Tommy is shot by wealthy deer hunters who immediately disappear from the scene. The incident leads to an investigation that then takes viewers though a journey that unravels into corruption, betrayal, ambition, and murders. The story centers on a dysfunctional upper-class family, a corrupt middle-class family trying to climb the social ladder, and a struggling lower-class family trying to survive. At the beginning of the film, viewers are put on notice that any resemblance with reality is a pure coincidence, then it goes on to expose social disparities that seem all too real.
In this “social realist” film, Cordero examines the consequences that result from seeking and keeping power. Representing the upper-class in the urban landscape of Guayaquil is Emilio Baquerizo, played by Daniel Adum Gilbert. Emilio is eager to sell the land he inherited and is willing to do whatever it takes, even if that includes evicting more than 200 families. His portrayal of the corrupt upper-class businessperson is impeccable and natural, despite being his first time acting. In the Q&A session following the film screening, Adum Gilbert, who is a visual artist, analyzed his role and the way it connected to his life in Ecuador. According to the artist, he could have easily become a lying antagonist like Emilio in real life.
Growing up in Ecuador, he was surrounded by powerful upper-class individuals with a double sense of morality. They would go to church on Sunday and commit injustices the very next day, he told the audience. In the film, Emilio is surrounded such people with positions of power in politics and the legal system. They pretend to defend the rights of the vulnerable while playing a dirtier game in the shadows, while people are distracted with soccer games and false promises. It can be dangerous to stop believing in those distractions, as one of the movie’s corrupt characters points out, saying: “you need some death to celebrate a carnival,” a phrase that echoes in the film’s Spanish-language title, “Sin muertos no hay carnaval” (without dead people there is no carnaval).
Watch our coverage of the festival’s opening night by Ricardo Pontes
Ecuadoran actor and director Andrés Crespo Arosemena plays Lisandro Terran, a corrupt lawyer and opportunist lawyer, who acts as the mediator between Emilio and his family and the lower class shantytown dwellers. He understands perfectly the philosophy of powerful people and takes it to extremes for his own selfish ends. He promises people deeds to their property, charging them for his legal services, while knowing that he plans to sell their homes to his rich associates. To carry out the evictions and quiet people who have lost trust in him, some people have to be murdered, including his daughter’s boyfriend, who is forced to hide to prevent being killed. His daughter Samantha (Antonella Valeriano), like his dad, plays a bridge between different social classes. She is a witness to her father’s corruption and murders, while also trying to protect her boyfriend and his family.
In this Shakespearean thriller of greed, betrayal, corruption, and forbidden love, Sebastián Cordero creates a vivid portrayal of a city filled with high-rise buildings and shantytowns inhabited by poor people, whose lives are affected by the games of dysfunctional yet powerful individuals.
The festival continues at AFI Silver through Oct. 4. Check back later for more festival coverage.
—Estefani Flores
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