BOLIVIA

Year: 2001
UK: NFT
Cast: Freddy Flores, Rosa Sanchez, Oscar Bertea, Enrique Liporace, Marcelo Videla, Hector Anglada, Alberto Mercado
Director: Adrian Caetano
Country: Argentina
Language: Spanish (English subtitles)
UK: 75 mins
UK Release Date: 20 June 2003 (Limited Release - London)

Synopsis

BOLIVIA, financed through the Rotterdam Film Festival's pioneering Hubert Bals Fund, won the FIPRESCI critics' award at the London Film Festival in 2002. This low budget second feature is essentially the simple tale of an immigrant worker following his dreams in Buenos Aires, presented in verite-style grainy black and white.

Freddy (Freddy Flores) has left behind his family and his home in Bolivia to try his luck in Argentina, where he hopes to build a future in which they can be reunited. He finds a job as a cook in a bar where the owner is happy to contravene the law so as to employ cheap labour. The interactions between Freddy, his co-workers and the regular clientele unfold into an unassuming and moving drama, where prejudice and discrimination are commonplace, and rare glimpses of warmth all the more precious because of this.