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The Dove and the Wolf, by Carlos Lenin, a love story that grows among violence

Gustavo R. Gallardo

The Dove and the Wolf (2019), by Carlos Lenin, was presented at the 17th Morelia International Film Festival as part of the Mexican Feature Films Section, with the presence of producer Miguel Ángel Sánchez, actors Armando Hernández, Mónica del Carmen and Paloma Petra.

Lenin’s directorial debut tells the story of a couple who lives the violence of a town in northern Mexico; everything is based on the director’s experiences in Linares, Nuevo León, where he grew up.

“What is evident are the consequences of violence. My characters are there, trying to love each other while all of this happens. Violence is there, it remains, at least generationally we are the children of that violence and we should think about what we can do in order for this to change, and that should be manifested in our cinema, from where we film it to how we question it,” he said.

The Dove and the Wolf , produced at the National School of Cinematic Arts of the UNAM (ENAC) —formerly the University Center for Cinematographic Studies (CUEC)—, was awarded the Swatch Art Peace Hotel Award at the 72nd edition of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, which was held from August 7 to 17 last year.

In the afternoon, as part of the screenings before the audience of the Mexican Feature Film Section, filmmaker Carlos Lenin presented his directorial debut The Dove and the Wolf, in the company of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Batel, vice president of the Festival.

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas thanked the Mexican filmmaker and the team for taking into account the FICM to register their film, “I want to thank you, and it is good that you thought of Morelia to register this work, in this case, a directorial debut”; likewise, he personally celebrated the title of the film “I am glad and I celebrate that it has the name of my middle school texts.”

For his part, Carlos Lenin thanked the audience for attending the screening of his first fiction feature film and confessed that it is about a very intimate story, “I am very excited to share it with you because, well, it is a very personal story.”