Films / Here And There (Aquí Y Allá)

Mexico | Narrative Feature | 2012 | 110 min | Website

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Director: Antonio Méndez Esparza
Awards: Louvre d’Or – Festival du Nouveau cinema 2012; The Golden Gateway – Mumbai Film fest 2012; Critic’s Week Grand Prix-Cannes
Spanish w/English subtitles
Film source: Torch Films

“Restrained and contemplative, Spanish filmmaker Antonio Mendez Esparaza’s debut Aquí y Allá, is about life in a small mountain village in Guerrero, Mexico. In the vein of Ozu or even Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the film is composed of sublime little fragments of life passing by—without the magical realism. A family sits at the table eating dinner. A teenager experiences first love. Men work in the fields. Crickets chirp in the night. Guerreran denizens mill in the street, quiet and hard-working even in the face of minor personal tragedies. A man (Pedro de Los Santos Juarez) returns home from the US to his pregnant wife and two daughters.
This is the best film yet to screen at Cannes’ Critics’ Week, confidently made without a single wasted scene. The quotidian reality of Guerrero village life is realized with lyricism and lack of sentimentality. Columbia University Cinema grad Mendez Esparaza’s cast of non-actors, lead by Juarez and Teresa Ramirez Aguirre, give reticent performances. In a time when cinematic images are often frantic and hysterical, Aquí y Allá, stands out […] Peaceful, almost biblical and completely absorbing, this film is a masterpiece.” – Indiewire