“Las Herederas | The Heiresses (2018) by Marcelo Martinessi was such a cool film. It was the first Paraguayan film that I have ever seen. I accidentally ended up here at World Cinema Amsterdam. I wasn’t even aware that this festival was going on. I just wanted to see this interesting film that displays class differences and it turned out to be such a beautiful surprise. I even liked the Q & A afterward. The film tells the story of two wealthy women who are experiencing financial troubles. One of them is even jailed for fraud and the other has to survive on her own for the first time. The cinematography was very nice. The colors had an interesting connection with the obscure prison scenes and life outside of prison. But also with the small world that the main character was living in and her world that began to expand. Besides that, it was interesting to see the subtle class differences in general, but also how she slowly shifted from her own class becoming part of another class. It was done in an intriguing way and she actually grew. The way that Paraguay has overt class differences is something we don’t really have in the Netherlands or at least we don’t appoint it like that or experience it in such a way. But it could teach us that even in a city like Amsterdam where we might think that we are all connected, but we often aren’t and we live separate lives. The main character had to leave her safe zone and she was scared, but eventually made new connections and that is something that I do recognize in a different sort of experience I had. I went through a job crisis and had to do a lot of different jobs outside of my field of what I had initially studied and outside of my own safe zone. But you meet so many different people and you find out that it doesn’t matter what you do for a living. It’s important that you work and make the best of things.”
Photo and story by Feargal Agard.
