If there was an award for the most stylish opening scene, it would go to Álvaro Pulpeiro for ‘So Foul a Sky’. A road movie and a immersive report from a Venezuela on the verge of collapse. Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s classic novel ‘Nostromo’, we are led into a twilight world where allegiances change among the travellers under the enormous dome of the sky. Pirates and pilgrims cross tracks, and oil is traded on the black market in the middle of nowhere. Crackling car radios relay an ideological battle of words. Has the oil cast a curse on Venezuela? The country is in the midst of the worst political and humanitarian crisis that South America has experienced in the 21st century. Instead of trying to explain the chaotic situation, Pulpeiro places us in the middle of it. A sensory and cinematic film, where the oil runs like thick, black blood through the arteries of the road network and connects us with some of the people who are trying to make life work beyond law and order.

So Foul a Sky

The Spanish vessel ‘Ilha Brava’ arrives from the deep seas of the south Atlantic. 55 days at sea are interrupted by only five days docked in the port of Montevideo. The city exists as a hologram for the sailors, standing like a shadow behind the vessel that gives shelter. Men of diverse nationalities and religions, yet all share the same broken gaze, in which a dream of home absorbed through a screen is a haunting and entertaining presence during the long dead hours of waiting.