A transgenre film “without borders, without gender” that represents something radical in terms of documentary form, queerness and the ways in which interiority is represented on the screen, Anhell69 opens with director Theo Montoya narrating from an open casket in the back of a hearse driven by influential Colombian filmmaker Víctor Gaviria. Cruising the streets of Medellín, a montage of televisual carnage, ghoulish dance parties, and the signing of the Colombian peace agreement plays like a death dream. A visual eulogy for the city as cemetery, a gay ghost town in the mountains embalmed in the fears of an annihilated generation and nation. An in memoriam of dead friends murdered, impaled, overdosed and disappeared. A mourning for Colombia’s history of violence, a lost protagonist and an aborted B-movie. Montoya repurposes his abandoned horror film about the forbidden desires of ghosts and their queer admirers and his casting tapes to build a brilliant metaphor for Colombian queer youth’s nihilism and struggle to carry on. Angie Driscoll
Anhell69 is streaming online May 5-9. Streaming is only available in Canada. Blush - An Extraordinary Voyage is not be available for streaming.