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Looking for an Alternative to Condescending Views: Paula Markovitch Presented ÁNGELES at the 23rd FICM

Alan Rodríguez

Ángeles by Paula Markovitch premiered at the 23rd Morelia International Film Festival (FICM). The film competes in the Mexican Feature Film Section.

Paula Markovitch and the film’s leading actress Ángeles Pradal were joined by members of their production team, including actor Abian Vainstein; producers Yossy Zhaga, Martín Paolorossi and Paulina Villavicencio; and co-editor Agustín Adba. 

Markovitch and Pradal previously worked together eight years ago on Cuadros en la oscuridad (2017), and at that moment, Markovitch promised they would work together again on a piece created especially for Ángeles.

A co-production between Argentina and Mexico, Ángeles is the fourth feature film from Buenos Aires-born directo and tells the story of a twelve-year-old girl who sells candy on the streets with her younger sister. She starts talking to a parking lot attendant, who tells her about his plan to end his life by jumping off a building. Rather than trying to convince him otherwise, she decides to help her friend.

"I wrote this specifically for her. We wanted to build a character together who challenges conventional morality, someone with a unique understanding of empathy and what it means to help others. A character that's irreverent, wild, and untamed. At that moment, we reached that ending that simply seemed to be what the character would naturally do, without explanation and without guilt,” the director added. 

During filming, the young actress displayed a unique range of emotions that led Markovitch, together with cinematographer Claudio Rocha, to suggest using a camera that would not conceal its presence and would pulsate along with the characters. This encouraged a freedom of movement among the actors: “I wanted the camera to improvise too [...] to capture the hesitation of life, to be unpredictable, unstaged, and capture true and unique moments.” 

The screenwriter of films such as Duck Season (dir. Fernando Eimbcke, 2004) and The Box (dir. Lorenzo Vigas, 2021) spoke at the end of the conference about her interest in approaching characters from childhood: “I think that sometimes children are treated condescendingly [...] this work seeks to find an alternative to that kind of view and to see the other as an equal, as an empowered, dignified, unpredictable, mysterious and capable of the most beautiful and cruel things, just like us,” she concluded.