COUNTRY
Austria, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland
PRODUCTION
Bernhard Hetzenauer, Grundstudio Winterthur
YEAR2023
DURATION30 min
WRITING Germán López Rosales, Bernhard Hetzenauer
CINEMATOGRAPHY Bernhard Hetzenauer
EDITION Gabriela Sandoval Torres, André Siegers
CAST Germán López Rosales
DISTRIBUTION Sixpackfilm
INTERNATIONAL SALES Sixpackfilm
CONTACT office@sixpackfilm.com
SYNOPSIS Germán López Rosales, from Mexico, recounts his experience during a human smuggling operation from the border city of Laredo, Texas, to San Antonio. Locked in a tractor-trailer, eight of the 39 immigrants died that day next to Germán from the extreme heat and lack of water. Two others died later in the hospital. Distant wide-angle shots of Texas suburbs and highways and the film's slow editing rhythm help place Germán's testimony at the center of the film.
Bernhard Hetzenauer
Innsbruck 1981. He studied Scenography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Film at the HFBK Hamburg, Documentary Film at the FUC Buenos Aires and Gestalt Therapy in Quito. He works as a filmmaker, writer, DOP and producer. His work focuses on issues of subjectivity, representation and the construction of memory. His films have been shown in exhibitions, festivals, and on television in 38 countries.
La sombra de un dios (
A God's Shadow) was invited to Viennale, Max Ophüls Preis, Ann Arbor, Sheffield Doc Fest, Message to Man, Morelia, Cartagena, Guadalajara, among 55 other festivals.
The Birthmark, co-directed with Pia Ilonka Schenk Jensen, won the Latino Film Festival at Yale.
Those Next to Us is the third part of his Mexican trilogy. He lives in Mexico, Germany and Austria.
FILMOGRAPHY
They Wanted to Be Loved (short film, 2022),
The Birthmark (short film, 2019),
A God's Shadow (short film, 2017),
Faces of Athens (documentary, 2017),
Ecuador ama la vida, El buen vivir, Shairy Quimbo (tv series, 2013),
And There Was Fire in the Center of the Earth (documentary, 2013)
X
