NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2024 (April 3-April 14)

[Chris Knipp]

FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ: OTRO SOL (2023)



Crime stories

Right from the start, Otro Sol introduces the viewer to an alleged real case that took place in 1978 in Spain. It was a robbery at Cádiz Cathedral, carried out by two Chilean thieves. The film shows the names of the thieves highlighted on the screen. It then cuts to a shot of the pair of cousins, played by Iván Cáceres and Thomas Quevedo. Traveling across the Atacama Desert, they meet a community of local prospectors digging for gold.

Otro Sol thus references a group of real and invented characters trapped in a film. It has also been described as a "purgatory of retired thieves" located on the coast of the Atacama Desert. The film follows a circular path, seeking to "invent and verify" the myth of Alberto Cándia, a Chilean international thief who, in 1978, carried out the robbery Cadiz Cathedral in Andalucia. Several other thieves are mentioned, with their aliases. Through interviews with his family, his former robbery partners and invented characters, little by little the testimonies and documents "rewrite the real" and "summon a fiction." This is all done in the spirit of play, not a documentary investigation of crime history.

One story told by a handsome man with a trim gray beard is of following a jeweler and his Alfa Romeo to his house in Milan with other Latin American accomplices, whose identity he kept hidden by speaking Italian, and not allowing them to speak Spanish. He claims they ran off and later killed two who were with them and cut off the head of one of them. (At this point the storytelling drifts into implausibility.)

Another story told by a corpulent son is of a father whose crack addiction led him to imagine gold hidden in the sand-plastered walls of the bathroom. His crazy digging in the walls all night led his wife to attack him with a knife, and she cut off an ear. He then was never seen again.

Through stories that seem to be real and others that can only be fantasy, Teare’s inventive film constantly shifts the borders between truth and fable, while presenting to the viewer the staggering, vast beauty of the local mountains, beaches, and rivers of Atacama and Andalusia.

Some comments have connected this film with David Lynch's Blue Velvet; another has mentioned Raul Ruiz, another, Godard. However the blend of fiction and documentary elements used here makes it different and less connected with mainstream or professional filmmaking. There is a spirit of experimentation and amateurism.

At the outset there is a little old man who speaks of spending his entire life panning for gold. He appears again at the end in a stream with young people sowing them how to do it. Thievery, gold digging, are themes, and the spirit of play.

Otro Sol, 85m. debuted at inéma du Réel Paris, Mar. 30, 2022 (chosen Best Latin American Feature Film), showing at Mar del Plata in 2023 Lisbon, Lussas, DMZ South Korea, Jakarta, Santiago, Belo Horizonte, Mexico City, and other festivals. It was screened for this review as part of the Apr. 3-13, 2024 MoMA and FLC New Directors/New Films series. Showtimes:
Sunday, April 7
5:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Francisco Rodríguez Teare)
Monday, April 8
6:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Francisco Rodríguez Teare)