Wañuy
2016 · 20m · Peru
Directed by Alejandro Roca Rey
Genres: drama, fantasy, mystery
Tones: contemplative, mythic, surreal
A disenchanted Peruvian taxi driver working one night shift has his worldview transformed by a prophet, a dark road, and a passenger with a secret.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A taxi driver + prophet + dark road should be pure supernatural schlock, but Roca Rey doesn't blink — he treats the mythic incursion as intimate and real, which is either radical restraint or radical faith, and I'm not sure which bothers me more.
The film situates itself deliberately in a lineage of Latin American magical realism and existential drama, with compositional precision that suggests Roca Rey knows exactly what tradition he's both honoring and complicating.
The entire film turns on the choice to keep the camera mostly still inside that taxi — no showy angles, no cutaways — which forces the performance and dialogue to do everything, and somehow that constraint is what makes the surreal actually land.
Festivals
- Aspen Shortsfest 2017, Jury Special Recognition
- Lima Film Festival 2017, Best Short Film
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2017, Official Selection
- Encounters Film Festival 2017, Official Selection