10 · 30 · 21 "A Fence is Something Very Harmless, But it Can Divide Large Ideologies": Joaquín del Paso's El hoyo en la cerca Share with twitter Share with facebook Share with mail Copy to clipboard Gustavo R. Gallardo El hoyo en la cerca (2021), co-written and directed by Joaquín del Paso, was presented at the 19th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) in the Mexican Feature Film Section. The filmmaker said that the film is inspired by a personal experience that occurred "exactly at that age that the protagonists, when there is that transition between childhood and adolescence, and in a similar school." It was a very short period, but it marked me deeply," he says. "When I finished Maquinaria Panamericana (2016) I told someone the story of what had happened to me in a summer camp where, while it didn't really reach the consequences that the film proposes, but they had scared us in a very cinematic way and that was the engine of the film,” he recalled. "More than something autobiographical, from a feeling we began to build this universe from scratch," added Del Paso about the film, which stars Rafael Ayala, Dante Carrillo, Giovanna Conconi and Valeria Lamm. Cast of El hoyo en la cerca by Joaquín del Paso at the 19th FICM At the press conference, the director said that he likes stories that don't have a leading character, but rather that the collective becomes a character in itself, "and reacts in a very different way to the individual." In addition, he said that the title of the film addresses the physical hermetic spaces, but even more so the mental ones, "and this division that seems to be even mental. How a fence that's really something harmless can divide such large ideologies and how it is really so easy to cross to the other side, and the union between these two worlds is possible and at the same time impossible." The film, he said, was written to work with an adult audience who "turns to the past and analyzes the events that marked it all the time", but considers that the film also has a message for young people, "of seeing themselves reflected at that age, kids living another reality - that is always a mirror." The film was awarded the Bisato Award for Best Cinematography at the 78th Venice International Film Festival, which was received by the film's director of photography, Alfonso Herrera Salcedo. "I want to cast a critical light on an educational system that, hand in hand with the Catholic religion, aims to reinforce established power structures, designed to create psychological barriers between people," Del Paso said.
