Acts of Worship

Acts of Worship tells the story of a special friendship between a junk and her guardian angel who she drags into oblivion with her without realising. Addiction is surrounded by hypocrisy and denial according to Rodriguez. The myth that addiction is just lack of willpower only serves to maintain the phenomenon: victims are burdened by shame, guilt and self-hatred. In her film, Rodriguez shows that a drug addict, someone who is a failure in the opinion of society, does not really have to be any different from someone who is successful and leads a `normal’ life.Alix lives on the street and is a heroin addict. Digna is a talented photographer who is about to break through. She has a house and a good relationship. The area where she finds the inspiration for her work is the one where Alix gets her drugs. However much the two women may differ, when they meet, they turn out to be two sides of one coin. For one person, fear manifests itself in self-destruction, for the other it is loneliness.The power of the film is partly to be found in the documentary style: the everyday pattern of stealing and scoring drugs has seldom been recorded so confrontationally and so painfully close by. The stunning way in which Ana Reeder plays Alix lifts Acts of Worship far above the conventions of ‘the genre’.