My Mexican Bretzel opens with black-and-white clips of pilots during World War II in Switzerland, subtitled with excerpts from – so we are told – the diary of Vivian Barrett. She talks about herself and her husband Léon, who partly lost his hearing in an accident with his plane and could no longer fly. The couple’s glamourous life then unfolds in diary excerpts and footage shot by Léon, about whom we also learn that he developed a successful anti-depressant, and had an obsession with many different forms of transportation.
The painstakingly edited home movies accompany Vivian’s thoughts and observations, and more abstract visual material represents her fears, secret desires and tormenting dreams. She frequently quotes the Indian guru Kharjappalli, who keeps her going in times of uncertainty and emotional turbulence. Sound is used cleverly and with restraint, reinforcing the images or underscoring the emotions. We realise that the viewer is being manipulated, but to what extent only becomes clear at the end.
Winner IFFR 2020 Found Footage Award.
Trailer
This content is available after accepting the marketing cookies.
Film details
- Country of production
- Spain
- Year
- 2019
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2020
- Length
- 72"
- Medium/Format
- DCP
You may also like this
-
Ofrenda
Two young women are reunited in the Argentine pampas, in a place where they spent their childhoods.
-
Bright Future Competition
-
-
A Rifle and a Bag
Intimate documentary about Indian communist rebels who put down their arms to safeguard their future.
-
Bright Future Competition
-
-
Truth or Consequences
Earth’s richest people have fled into space. This speculative documentary is tender portrait of a desert town.
-
Bright Future Competition
-