Ecuadorian film ‘Yellow Glasses’ opens this Thursday in cinemas

Yellow glasses It opens in theaters in Ecuador from this Thursday, October 21, after passing through VOD (Video On Demand) platforms. The film is produced by The Invisible Republic and directed by the Ecuadorian Iván Mora Manzano.

The film has also had an important international tour, since its premier It was last year at the Vancouver International Film Festival and from there -as the production company says- it has been selected in the Cinequest Festivals (USA), Monterrey International Film Festival (MEX) and will also be screened at the festivals: San Francisco Latino, Seattle Latino, Orlando Film Festival, Kunturñawi Film Festival and at the EQUIS Feminist Film Festival.

The protagonists of this story are Paloma Pierini, who plays Julia, a woman in search of her own reinvention and creativity, in the midst of an existential crisis in which she wonders if she will be able to find a job according to what she studied or if she will achieve obtain the long-awaited scholarship to study literature. The co-stars are the renowned film and theater actor Alejandro Fajardo and the actor and musician Enzo Macchiavello. The three of them will live a friendly triangle full of conversations about their favorite writer, Clara Lunares, walks through the El Ejido park, trips on the Ecovía, theater rehearsals, bars and karaoke, films and a literary workshop. Everything happens in Quito.

The actress

Paloma Pierini Ormaza, the protagonist, She is the daughter of the remembered actress Martha Ormaza (1959-2018), known for forming the group of actresses Las Marujitas. Her foray into the cinema was somewhat casual because she was signed for a supporting role, but she ended up taking the leading role. “In cinema I have very little experience, I have participated in many student shorts, but more than anything my experience is theatrical. Yellow glasses it’s really my first serious, big project as an actress. Lately I have done microteatro in Quito ”, says the actress.

Ecuadorian film ‘Yellow Glasses’, by Iván Mora Manzano, premieres at a festival in the United States

Paloma says she had the best acting school thanks to her mother’s teachings. “Since I was little I was always linked to the theater. But I also dedicate myself to theatrical lighting, scenography, artistic direction, montages. I have done almost everything in the theater and what I lacked was acting per se”. And it came to him. His great debut has been thanks to Yellow glasses.

Paloma’s connection to this film was at a time when she was in charge of the artistic direction of In light of the facts, a play written by his mother. “One of the actresses in that play was also doing the casting for Yellow glasses and he told me they needed names for this movie. I went to help a friend and she left without expecting it ”.

This is how she achieved her role to play Julia, a girl who is in crisis because she finishes her studies in philology abroad and with this also a relationship that she had for many years. “She returns to Quito without knowing what she wants from relationships, from life; is in limbo. What she wants is to get a scholarship and leave to continue studying because what she wants is to be an eternal student ”.

For Pierini, Yellow glasses has a different proposal in terms of aesthetics than what Ecuadorian films have shown. “The script is light, unpretentious. Talk about things that burn us and hurt us all. What I would like is for people to know how to recognize this type of subtlety ”, says the Quito actress who has studied Fine Arts in Italy.

Actors

The main cast is completed by the Guayaquileños Alejandro Fajardo and Enzo Macchiavello Bruno. They put themselves in the shoes of Ignacio and Darío, respectively.

Enzo already had his first call to a casting for a film production. It was precisely by the hand of Iván Mora and the same production company The Invisible Film. “It was for No fall, no spring (2012) -in which he acted with Fajardo himself-. By then I had already recorded But, a Joe Houlberg film. In 2013 Iván Mora invited me to another project (Yellow glasses) who wrote it with Isabel Carrasco. Already in 2017 it is consolidated Yellow glasses, but due to the pandemic it was not released. For 2018, Christian Avecillas proposed me to do theater, we also played music; now we have a theater group called Miento and we want to take it back after the pandemic. Avecillas is one of my poetry minors and thanks to the character of Darío I was left hanging with that. Poetry hooked me and I’m still very interested ”.

In the film, Darío Portales travels from Guayaquil to Quito, believing that he will have better luck as a poet. “He was already writing, but he wanted to fully develop and establish himself. When he arrives he thinks he has everything mastered, not only with his career but with the girls because he is a latin lover. There he meets Julia, but she indirectly slows him down, both emotionally and intellectually; everything collapses because he discovers that it is not as good as he thought. They start a round, but she has other plans. What he believes about that relationship will not be ”, says Enzo, who highlights the audiovisual level of Yellow glasses.

Alejandro Fajardo is an acting heavyweight. His appearances in theater and cinema place him as one of the most prominent actors in the country. The most recent films in which he appeared were Black hole (2018), “but we also recorded Us, my dad and the dog too by Pablo Arturo Suárez which is in post-production stage. Ignacio is a character who is looking for his place in society. He is happy with what is happening to him, but he always questions his future “says Fajardo, who is currently in a theatrical season with the play The song of the hare at the Paulsen Study. “I have a couple of film projects in 2022,” he anticipates.

“Yellow glasses shows life less complicated than it really is. One always kind of is, unconsciously, looking for problems, but in reality these are an engine to get ahead. Life seen through a yellow filter is what the film proposes ”.

What do you prefer more, acting in cinema or theater? Fajardo chooses the theater. “They are different, but the theater draws my attention much more because it is alive, it is live, it is what happens at that moment. This process is more interesting ”, concludes the actor.

After its preview on Wednesday, October 20 at the Ecuadorian House of Culture, it will be able to be seen at Multicines CCI, Multicines Scala, Supercines 6 de Diciembre and Cinemark Plaza de las Américas. In Guayaquil it can be seen at Supercines Ceibos and Cinemark Mall del Sol; and in Cuenca, in Multicines Batán.

Technical sheet of ‘Yellow glasses’

Countries: Ecuador, Brazil.

Duration: 98 minutes.

Direction: Iván Mora Manzano.

Script: Iván Mora, Isabel Carrasco.

Production: Isabel Carrasco, La República Invisible (Ecuador).

Co-production: Tathiani Sacilotto and Antonio Ferreira Persona Non Grata Pictures (Brazil).

List: Paloma Pierini, Alejandro Fajardo, Enzo Macchiavello.

Director of Photography: Olivier Auverlau.

Editing: Joana Collier.

Sound design: Juan José Luzuriaga.

Sound Mix: Ricardo Cutz.

Art direction: Belén Draghi.

Production Manager: Cinthia Velasco.