Tremors
Original title: Temblores
2019 | 107 minutes | Guatemala, France, Luxembourg
Director: Jayro Bustamante
Writer: Jayro Bustamante
Language: Spanish
Berlin International Film Festival, 2019
Outfest Los Angeles, 2019
Vancouver International Film Festival, 2019
Renowned director Jayro Bustamante burst onto the international film scene with his sensational 2015 debut feature, Ixcanul (presented at the Canadian Film Institute’s Latin American Film Festival in 2016). In this, his second film, Bustamante delivers a riveting personal portrait of a man torn between his sexuality, his family, and his faith.
Pablo is a successful business executive, married and a father of two, living in an affluent neighbourhood. Pablo also has a secret. When it is discovered that he has been living a double life (he has a gay relationship and has decided to move in with his beloved Francisco), his distraught and deeply conservative evangelical Christian family intervenes in disturbing, increasingly aggressive ways to bring him back to a ‘normal life.’ Part of their intervention involves a controversial, church-sanctioned ‘cure’ for Pablo’s sexual orientation.
Faced with increased pressure from his parents, his wife, and his church, what will Pablo choose to do? The answer in this impressive film is not simple.
Selected for the Panorama section of the 2019 Berlin Film Festival, Tremors is an intense, unflinching drama about the complexity of a still taboo subject in the more conservative parts of Guatemalan society.
- Tom McSorley
Preceded by the short film
One Leg In, One Leg Out
“Never say never, because you never know where you’re going to end up next”.
Iman, a lively, strong-willed transgender sex worker, struggles to move from the streets and into a career as a social worker, exposing the challenging realities of having your lifelong dream conflict with your means of survival.
Together with fictional Tremors, this cinematic duo share the experiences of two people, in very different circumstances, facing the same uphill battle just to simply be themselves.