Among the achievements of the film, it was chosen best feature film in the American section at the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival.
“We know of few Latin American fiction films that turn to the narration with fluidity and clarity to tell a story that combines nationalities, languages, wishes, blackmail, lies and strategies to maintain movement and illusion, even with the threat of the title. Empty it tells enormous distances through few places and proposes decisions based on clear axes: a contemporary history with some nutrients of classicism ”. With these words the international critic Javier Porta Fouz refers (The nation) about the Ecuadorian film Empty (2020).
Yes OK achieved its world premiere at the 2020 Busan Film Festival in South Korea, This was not the case for movie theaters in Ecuador, because due to the health crisis it was put on hiatus and now it was re-released on the 18th of this month. “I am very pleased to be able to reach the Ecuadorian public again with a film that could not follow its normal path here, but that internationally has had quite a few achievements … and this encourages me a lot to move forward, that in the cinemas they have agreed to re-release … “, says Paúl Venegas, director of the film.
The film portrays the human drama that Ecuador is also part of, migration. The film shows the story of the couple Lei and Wong, who clandestinely arrive in Guayaquil. Her final destination is to go to the United States. Instead, he dreams of bringing his son from China. “I received quite a few positive international reviews from the media, from public relations, etc., on the freshness of the subject, on something quite different within the cinema which is to address Chinese migration, it is a subject little addressed by the filmmakers of the world and that comes from South America, Latin America, Ecuador in this case … ”, says Venegas.
Empty hits the billboard with several achievements. In 2020 it was the candidate for Ecuador to be nominated for best international film at the Oscars and best Ibero-American film at the Platinum awards.
In Ecuador, it won the award for best Ecuadorian film at the Guayaquil Film Festival. In Buenos Aires, the International Independent Film Festival (Bafici) won the award for best feature film in the American section. Bafici is one of the important festivals in the region. He has also been to festivals in Japan, the United States, Spain, Argentina, among others.
By the end of this month, it will compete for best film at the Ceará film festival in Fortaleza, Brazil.
For March 2022, according to Venegas, the commercial premiere is ready in the cinemas of Argentina, the one that is given from the award he obtained in Bafici. It is also expected to arrive in parallel in Uruguay, the film’s co-producer country.
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The way to Empty in festivals it gives for more, according to the filmmaker, that does not rule out taking it to the platforms of streaming. “Already in itself it will be in DirecTV, in six Latin American territories, it will be from the first quarter of next year and thus platforms will continue to be added as the international route progresses,” he says.
Among the actors who are part of the cast of the film are Fu Jing, Lidan Zhu, Meng Day Min, Yin Baode and Meizhen Deng, as well as Ricardo Velástegui from Guayaquil.
Regarding the cast, the filmmaker highlights the professionalism of the actors, who despite not having been in front of a camera before, especially the Chinese, performed and received good reviews.
Regarding the character of Velástegui, he points out that he liked it very much. “It was this freshness of this Latin American, Guayaquil character … I remember in Busan, in South Korea, for example, and everywhere people laugh a lot with his interpretation and that idiosyncrasy also marks in this case that of Guayaquil and Ricardo themselves very happy and flattered by the film to receive these awards … ”, explains Venegas.
Other projects
The filmmaker is currently working on scripts for other films and a web series called The hounds. He is also developing the feature film Sound of silence, which deals with a “paradigmatic case of Ecuador” and which will be known in the future, and in an international fiction series called The era of mission.
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It is also in the post-production stage of the short film. With me, which was filmed during the pandemic and which addresses the health crisis. It is expected that next year it will participate in festivals and then it will premiere in Ecuador. The actress Sofía Barriga is the protagonist of this project.
“The short film is about the story of how a performing artist saw her life interrupted through the pandemic when she was locked up and how she faces her emotional state in four walls of her house … It is a short film a bit dystopian in its conception and how family relationships were broken through the pandemic we are experiencing ”, he explains about With me. (I)
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