Eminent editor Ariel Escalante Meza, whose feature directorial debut “The Sound of Things” was Costa Rica’s entry for the Oscars and traveled to more than 30 film festivals, is at Cannes with his new feature.
“Domingo and the Mist” will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard strand.
Set in the tropical mountains of Costa Rica, the film follows widower Domingo who owns a piece of land which is coveted to build a new highway. When the contractors send in thugs to intimidate the community the neighbours leave one by one but Domingo refuses to give in, especially as the land hides a special and mystical secret.
The cast includes Carlos Ureña, Sylvia Sossa, Esteban Brenes Serrano and Aris Vindas.
“I think of ‘Domingo and the Mist’ as a film about the physical incarnation of memory and the ghosts it leaves behind,” says Escalante Meza in the film’s press notes. “My film is both personal and political; painfully realistic as well as joyfully imaginative. I have been obsessed with the mist from when I was a child, something so magical that it could only be a work of fiction: the mist is like a poem.”
“I like the idea of exploring the mist as a metaphor for mourning, a manifestation of the love we have lost and our inability to let go,” Escalante Meza adds. “But also as a symbol of hope, as the mist represents a wind of change, an opportunity to break the chains of the past and amend our mistakes.”
As revealed by Variety, Films Boutique is handling international sales.
Watch the clip here: