Everything Else
Description
For her narrative debut, documentarian Natalia Almada casts her keen observational eye on the inner turmoil of a lifelong bureaucrat in Mexico City. Doña Flor (Academy Award-nominee Adriana Barraza) spends her days behind a desk reviewing voter application IDs. As she nears retirement, she has become indistinguishable from the many dejected faces that join her on her daily train ride. The oppression of her daily routine extends even to her home where she lives alone with her cat, Manuelito. There, she makes lists of the people she assisted during the work day, meticulously cataloging her work life, while TV news reports of natural disasters and violence against women fill the air like white noise. Any solace she might find in her frequent visits to the local pool is marred by the memory of a tragedy that prevents her from stepping foot into the water, but simultaneously connects her to who she once was. With an austere manner and mitigated inflection, Barraza gives a fascinating, hypnotically controlled performance. Through Almada’s attentive and empathetic lens (captured with rigid precision by cinematographer Lorenzo Hagerman), Everything Else is a starkly intimate portrait of a woman at odds with her life. —Jesse Knight
Before making her narrative feature debut with Everything Else, Natalia Almada won the Sundance Documentary Directing Award for her 2009 film El General. Her 2011 follow-up, El Velador, about drug violence in Mexico, premiered at New Directors/New Films, and screened at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight. In 2012, she was the first Latina filmmaker to win a MacArthur Fellowship. Everything Else is loosely inspired by her 2002 experimental short film, All Water Has a Perfect Memory, in which Almada’s mother confronts the loss of her two-year-old daughter. “I am interested in how a wound from the past, which has left a deep scar, can suddenly open again,” Almada said. “There is only a hint of this loss in the film, but the essence of it, the pain, is present.”
Trailer
//player.vimeo.com/video/207678648?autoplay=1Film Details
Language Spanish
Year 2016
Runtime 98
Country Mexico/USA/France
Director Natalia Almada
Producer Alejandro de Icaza, Natalia Almada, Dave Cerf
Writer Natalia Almada
Editor Natalia Almada, Dave Cerf
Cinematographer Lorenzo Hagerman
Music Marc Ribot
Cast Adriana Barraza, Alejandro de Icaza