„The Hole In The Fence” wins the Cairo festival
Co-financed by the Polish Film Institute, „The Hole In The Fence” directed by Joaquin del Paso won the Golden Pyramid for the best film at the Cairo International Film Festival. This is a Mexican-Polish co-production in which Jacek Poniedziałek played one of the main roles. The 43rd edition of the festival was held from November 26 till December 5.
Previously, Joaquin del Paso’s film was presented in the Orizzonti section of the 78th Venice International Film Festival, where it received the Premio Bisato d’Oro (best cinematography) critics’ award, and in the Competition of the Warsaw Film Festival.
Description of the plot
Every year, Centro Escolar los Pinos, a prestigious religious school for boys, sends its teenage students, „the sons of Mexico’s elite class” to camp in an outlying village. Boys, under the watchful eye of teachers and priests, improve their physical and moral „development”. Everyone tries to find their place in this elite and hermetic society, where the social class and the color of the parents’ skin determine the status of a child.
On the first night, camp participants discover a hole in the fence that triggers a chain of mysterious events. There are indications that an intruder has broken in from a dangerous neighboring village and that children may become targets for organ trafficking and satanic rituals fueled by social vengeance. As hysteria and paranoia spread among the boys, it becomes clear that things are not as they seem. What if the threat does not come from outside, but from the camp?
Film makers
Director Joaquín del Paso was born in Mexico City in 1986. He studied at the Film School in Łódź, which he graduated with honors and obtained a master’s degree in art. His feature debut „Maquinaria Panamericana” premiered at the Berlinale Forum in 2016, and was then presented at over 60 international festivals, where he won numerous awards. Del Paso is a founding member of Amondo, a film collective based in Warsaw, Delhi and Mexico.
The director, together with Lucy Pawlak, co-wrote the script for the film. Alfonso Herrera Salcedo is responsible for the cinematography, Paloma López Carrillo for editing, Aleksander Dutkiewicz and Jorge Fuentes for the makeup, Ursula Schneider, Lucia del Mar Suárez del Real and Paulina Kuźnicka for costumes, and the music was made by Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon. The Polish co-producers of the film are the Amondo Films Foundation (Paweł Tarasiewicz and Hanna Drewek) and the Role Play Agency (Rafał Krus). Lightcraft studio was responsible for the special effects. The film’s cast includes Valeria Lamm Williams, Yubah Ortega, Lucciano Kurti, Eric Walker, Santiago Barajas, Enrique Lascurain, Jacek Poniedziałek and Raul Vasconcelos.