‘Guayaquil Love’, an Ecuadorian short film with female stories is shown in the Pop Up Cinema app

Although it was a project designed in 2017 to be released in theaters, this month the director Alberto Pablo Rivera (Sexy Montañita, Final Minute) decided to distribute his short film Guayaquil Love in streaming, following the path of other international productions, and it can already be seen within the Pop Up Cinema app catalog.

With 20 minutes of duration, the audiovisual summons a renowned cast of local actors, who represent four couples in different stages and circumstances of their lives: Montse Serra, Andrés Garzón, Giovanna Andrade, José Andrés Caballero, Roberto Manrique, Frances Swett, Ricardo Velástegui, Lorena Robalino and Rivera himself, who also acts.

“I come from a tradition of watching movies on the big screen, but at the same time I understand that this is decreasing,” Rivera said in an interview for La Revista. “It is something generational. So you launch your product in movie theaters, there is already a large part of the public that will not go to see it because they have already decided not to go to movie theaters, but you can win them through a digital screen ”.

Rivera confesses, however, that he would love to see Guayaquil Love in theaters and that is why he has not yet ruled out turning it into a feature film. “For me, the full version is Ecuador Love, and also include the Galapagos Islands,” he said.

La Perla del Pacífico also becomes the protagonist of the production with its settings, such as Puerto Santa Ana, Malecón del Salado and Malecón 2000, where the four stories that never intertwine are developed.

“Something that has made me short circuit is that several films show the ugliest of the city, and I have nothing against that social cinema, because many of them have enchanted me, but not all of them should copy that style,” he warns. “We are also stories of beautiful places and romantic and happy stories. It is true that we have that pain, bitterness and crime, but at the same time, a beautiful landscape that we can share with someone who makes you happy. We are that combination, ”he says.

The production is also visually complemented with aerial shots of other municipal events, such as the giant balloon parade or the fireworks show over the Guayas River.

Their stories are also inspired, to a large extent, by real events, but above all they were designed to highlight their female protagonists. “I wanted to give women a place in the cinema that was not just the award that the protagonist gets because he manages to defeat the villain,” says Rivera. “We have already had several decades of that type of cinema.”

Instead, the director decided that women should take the lead in the dynamics of the relationship with their respective partners.

“They are imperfect women and they must strive to discover what they need, and it is something that happens in real life, because communication as a couple is not always clear,” he details. “Montse’s (Serra) story is a close story, because my mother died of cancer; So, that story is a tribute to what I would have loved for her to receive from her partner when she detected that disease, ”revealed the 36-year-old filmmaker.

In addition to continuing to produce for the Pop Up Cinema platform, Rivera also works on projects in a personal capacity, such as a 30-minute story that he has christened Bomba Molotov, inspired by an intense story of two lovers whom he accidentally crossed paths with during the first months of quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is also post-producing a documentary series that will rescue the commercials, series and songs that marked the childhood of Ecuadorians and that takes Netflix’s The Toys / Movies that made us as inspiration. “We found the most remembered commercial child and the creative one,” he enthuses. (DJL)