10 · 19 · 10

Contracorriente, a lesson about life and love

Araceli Calva, translated by Cindy Hawes

Applauded by the audience at the end of the screening, attended by filmmaker Terry Gilliam, Alejandro Ramírez, president of FICM, and Daniela Michel, director of FICM, Fuentes-León pointed out that the idea of the film came out of a screenwriting class he took in Los Angeles.

"During the class, we were asked to write a scene involving three people in
conflict, at one location," he said. "So I wrote the scene when the
protagonist enters the kitchen and there he comes into contact with a ghost, I kept this scene in my mind, and starting from there I wrote a play and then the screenplay."

Contracorriente takes place in a small fishing village on the northern
coast of Peru, where Miguel, a young fisherman who is married and about to become a father, has a secret affair with Santiago, an outcast painter.

Miguel faces a true dilemna when Santiago drowns accidentally and returns as a ghost to ask him if he will search for his body in the ocean and bury him properly according to the rituals of the town so that his soul can rest. But to bury him would reveal his relationship with Santiago.

"Obviously the film has a lot of me in it," the director said. "In the
beginning, it was only a love triangle, but I put a lot of myself in it --
this struggle to discover who I am, to reaffirm myself."

Fuentes-León explained that in Lima, as in all cities, there is a little
more tolerance toward homosexual relationships than in provincial towns,

"I didn't make a documentary about what it is like to be gay in a town in
Peru," he said. "Rather it could be a direct portrait of the aristocracy in
Lima. At least in Mexico there are gay marriages, but in Lima there aren't
any."

In 2010, Contracorriente won awards at the festivals in San Sebastián,
Sundance, Cartegena, Miami, Montreal, Nashville and Lima, among others.