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LETTERS FROM THE ENDS OF THE WORLD Was Screened As Part of the Tribute to Béla Tarr at the 24th FICM

Katia Barragán

The film Letters from the Ends of the World (2021), directed by thirteen filmmakers, was part of the program of the 24th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), as part of the tribute to the late filmmaker, close friend of the festival, Béla Tarr.

The film portrays the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown through fourteen personal home movies. The production was handled by the Bistrik7 collective, made up of graduates of film.factory, the doctoral school and experimental film workshop founded by Béla Tarr.

The presentation was attended by curator and producer Amila Ramović, along with directors Patrick Marshall, Marta Hernaiz Pidal, and Gustavo Vega.

The Hungarian filmmaker was a pivotal figure in the history of the FICM. He participated as a guest of honor in previous editions—including the ninth and the fifteenth, during which he received the UNAM Film Archive Medal. In this year’s edition, the festival paid tribute to him following his passing and screened his film The Turin Horse (2011) again.

Letters from the Ends of the World brings together works created in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, South Korea, Poland, Spain, and Mexico. The film was directed and written by Ghazi Alqudcy, Graeme Cole, Gonzalo Escobar Mora, Grant Gulczynski, Marta Hernaiz Pidal, Namsuk Kim, Bianca Lucas, Stefan Malešević, Patrick Marshall, Aleksandra Niemczyk, Pilar Palomero, Emma Rozanski, and Gustavo Vega, with Béla Tarr serving as producer.

Ramović recalled the deep respect Tarr always showed toward the audiences who attended his screenings. She also highlighted the importance he placed on the educational work at film.factory, where he sought to foster the professional development and creative freedom of his students. For their part, the directors expressed their gratitude for the screening and the tribute to Tarr, and shared their experiences of making the film under his production.

Before the screening, a fragment of a Zoom video call was shown in which the filmmakers, then students, talked with Tarr and asked him to participate as a producer of their film.

Following the screening, a Q&A session took place. The directors discussed how they incorporated their personal styles into the film. Regarding this, Hernaiz Pidal summarized her experience with one phrase: "I just had to be myself."

They were also asked what it meant to see their work again five years after its premiere, to which they replied that they were no longer the same people and that the passage of time was evident. Nevertheless, they acknowledged that the film still captured the language and the sense of sadness that permeated spaces during the lockdown.

Finally, they shared some of the lessons they learned from Tarr during their training. Vega recalled a reflection by the filmmaker on filming everyday situations and their relationship to cinematic language: “He would tell us: You film a character doing everyday things [...] all of that is choreography. If all those things end up being the majority of a film, then where is the film?... Probably in a moment of honesty.”

The directors thanked the audience for attending and invited them to explore their respective bodies of work.