Diego and Elena take the flight to New York and then transfer to the connecting flight to Miami.

Once they arrive at the first airport, they are stopped and made to stand for a long time in a control space with indefinite times.

They are not informed of what is happening and anyone who addresses them does so in a peremptory manner without any regard for their most basic needs.

An initial bureaucratic interrogation begins through which they are asked for a series of documents that the two boys have carefully prepared, and despite the promptness something always seems to be missing.

They proceed to another border agent who will ask them questions about private and intimate information in the face of which the Venezuelan urbanite Diego is patient, trying to maintain control of the situation, while the contemporary dancer Elena impatiently undermines.

The security officer's retort will grant no reticence or resistance.

There is no chance to defend themselves in the face of isolation (they are ordered to turn off their cell phones and store them in their suitcases), nor to shield themselves in the face of venial sins, accusations and intolerable psychological violence.

They will move on to separate interrogation of the two cohabitants drastically disrupting mutual trust and the dream of the realization of a new life project together.

seventeen days of filming, 77 minutes of tension for the debut feature by two Venezuelan directors: the construction of a psychological/political/social thriller that allows no pause; you stay glued to your seat.

The film takes its cue from personally lived experiences, where discrimination against migrants entering the U.S., airport seizure, authoritarian behavioral claims, psychological terrorism, abuse of power, and arrogance rise up in the face of vulnerability, bewilderment, and a sense of helplessness.

The detention to which Elena and Diego are subjected arouses a destabilizing unease, that of someone who has the distinct perception that they are suffering an injustice and have no way to react except by making the situation worse.

An intrusive, vexatious, insinuating, insidious, and violent frustration: a trial suffered outside a courtroom without being able to appeal to any defense and without being able to use any public defender.

For directors Rojas and Vasquez also screenwriters, that confined space that symbolizes power and requires individuals to remain there, stationary in a non-place is simply what happens in reality in which what happens is often more serious than what is seen in the film.

The dark, noisy rooms of the airport become offices of the inquisition, where although the documents appear to be regular there are those who manage to exercise doubt and insinuate that atmosphere of distrust so far removed from the foreign couple and yet so well orchestrated by leading them back to an experience of no return.

A claustrophobic non-place, far from passing through... where a sadistic and inhuman power is exercised where the taste of humiliation and the flavor of contempt are simply the portrait of those who feel invested with a right that of the exercise of the total absence of respect for a couple that represents "simply," a part, far from minority of humanity if not for those rights concerning democracy, freedom, equality.

28-Jan-2024 by Beatrice