The Argentinean director Paula Markovitch has presented her new feature film Ángeles, with which she is competing in the Official Competition of the Festival de Málaga. It is an intimate and profoundly humanist work that explores life, love and farewell through three characters who inhabit the margins of society but refuse to define themselves by this.
 
At a press conference, together with the main actress, Ángeles Mayla Pradal, the filmmaker explained that "her story turns fragility into strength, and adversity into a space of unexpected vitality, reclaiming joy as a profoundly revolutionary gesture".
 
The film follows Angeles, Isabella and David over three decisive days in their lives. In this brief period of time, marked by the awareness of an inevitable farewell, the characters go through extreme emotions that force them to confront pain, affection and their own existence. For Markovitch, this proximity to death is precisely what gives life its particular intensity.
 
The director also clarified that the origin of the feature film lies in the desire to portray a form of vitality that often disappears in cinematic representations of poverty. In her opinion, characters living in marginalised contexts are often portrayed in a compassionate or defeatist light, when in reality they also experience joy, humour and desire. This is why, in Angels, she champions precisely this vital energy as a form of resistance in the face of adversity.
 
Markovitch also argued that joy can become a deeply subversive gesture. The protagonists of the film - a man who looks after a car park and two girls who sell sweets - are not portrayed as pitiable or as victims. They are characters who live in harsh conditions, but they retain the ability to enjoy, play and create strong bonds.
 
The project is based on her own personal experience. Raised in working-class neighbourhoods and marked by her family's history, as her parents lived in exile during the last Argentinean dictatorship, Markovitch has been able to see "how, on many occasions, the more difficult the circumstances, the stronger the human need to cling to moments of happiness". From this perspective, the film poses a universal reflection, which is that love and death run through all lives without distinction, and that this shared awareness is what makes all human beings equal.
 
In this regard, Ángeles also seeks to defend the singularity of the characters in the face of the weight of their environment. She was interested in portraying complex individuals, capable of expressing their own contradictions, impulses and secrets. Although the social context influences their lives, it does not completely determine who they are. Each of them retains an intimate space of freedom.
 
Angeles is the name of a fourteen-year-old girl who sells sweets on the street with her little sister. David, in his fifties, works in a car park. The two of them chat, take shelter from the heat in the parked cars, and get some fresh air. One afternoon David confesses to Angeles his intention to end his own life. Instead of dissuading him, Angeles decides to help her friend.
 
The process of creating the film was based on the cast’s improvisation skills - led by Mayla Pradal, Abian Vainstein and Isabella Ramírez -which allowed the characters to be constructed from a very organic emotional dimension. In this respect, the director highlighted María Ángeles Mayla Pradal's acting ability, as well as the energy and spontaneity that emerged during the work with the cast. This methodology allowed many scenes to stem from unexpected moments, integrating chance as a fundamental part of the staging.
 
With regard to filming, the Argentinean filmmaker reflected on her relationship with the camera and film language. She recalled a conversation with a girl who had seen her first feature film, El premio (The Award). The young spectator told her that in a particularly intense scene, she realised the character was not completely alone because someone was there filming him. This observation led the director to think about the way in which the new generations perceive cinema, increasingly aware of the presence of the camera and the creative process behind the images.
 
Based on this idea, the filmmaker revealed that in her film she uses a direct look at the camera and other formal resources to generate strangeness and arouse the viewer's curiosity. Her visual approach is inspired by both the classical pictorial tradition and the more experimental currents of contemporary art. For her, each shot functions as a brushstroke that attempts to capture the authenticity of a living moment.
 
With this film, Markovitch also proposes an alternative to condescending views of Latin American reality. Although the characters inhabit an environment marked by precariousness and orphanhood, the director insists that they are not moralised or idealised figures. They are imperfect, contradictory beings, sometimes luminous and sometimes harsh. But they possess something essential, which is the strength to live life fully.