A requiem for futures long forgotten, Theo Montoyo’s heartbreaking “trans film” (his term) is a portrait of his queer community in Medellin, Colombia. It’s a non-fiction account of a fantasy movie Montoyo embarked on nearly ten years ago, a ghost story in more ways than one. The title — evoking the grace of angels, entwined with the torment of perdition — comes from the Instagram handle of one of the young men Montoyo meets in casting sessions, Camilo Najar, whose touching mixture of joy and nihilism sums up the impulses of this generation of street kids, torn between hedonism, hope, and the specters of paramilitary crackdowns, endless narco wars, and violent homophobia.
The angels on Montoyo’s shoulders would include Leos Carax, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Carlos Reygadas, Rainer Werner Fassbinder… Outsider artists who find transcendence even in the midst of squalor and degradation. This is a vividly cinematic piece, fusing personal pain and poetry, candid interviews and sex-hungry supernatural spirits…
With Anhell69, Montoya has constructed an indelible, at times shattering portrait of a collection of lovers and fighters who have embraced hedonistic nihilism, just in order to find a place to exist.
Michael Sicinski, inreviewonline
Anhell69 is raw, uncompromising and disturbing, the best kind of transgressive documentary filmmaking. It is simultaneously poignant, angry and full of despair, a film about the marginalized who are left behind or left out: brutal but essential viewing.
Matthew Hays, POV magazine
Part documentary, part celebration of outsider lives, and part remembrance, it’s a defiantly hybrid piece that’s cunning, challenging and sometimes confusing, seemingly conceived to play out on the border between life and death itself.
Jonathan Holland, Screen
Theo Montoyo
Colombia
2023
In Spanish with English subtitles
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Credits
Screenwriter
Theo Montoyo
Cinematography
Theo Montoyo
Editor
Theo Montoyo, Delia Oniga, Matthieu Taponier
Original Music
Marius Leftărache
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