Mexico, a remote and mountainous corner.

Artemio lives on his plot of land where he struggles to cultivate wheat. He is old and worn by life, there is no running water, and the crops are sparse.

Extremely solitary and silent, he has few friends and one day receives a letter that he immediately burns in the lit fireplace.

He needs money and must undertake a journey to the city to retrieve his daughter with whom he has lost contact. A friend suggests he ask the landowner he has worked for over the past 60 years, but Artemio already knows the answer. In exchange, the landowner wants his small plot of land, but the elderly farmer cannot accept that.

He scrapes together some money by selling the gold of his deceased wife and sets off on this adventure. Reaching the city, where everything is large, chaotic, overwhelming, and dangerous, is not for him.

He meets a girl working on the streets who helps him find the place he needs to go. He has already identified his daughter's body and collected the box containing her recovered belongings. He goes to the girl's house, hoping to give her a proper burial, buying red shoes for her to wear. But an extreme event will change his plans.

An intense film, filled with faces sculpted by hardship, realities on the edge, insurmountable sorrows, and unpredictable encounters.

After long silences and dramatic situations, in just over 10 minutes, the film reveals the entire life story of the man who confronts the girl he met on the first day; guilt, responsibility, violence, alienation, fatigue, and survival accompany them on an unpredictable journey where pain cannot be redeemed.

Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser's debut work intimately addresses the irreversibility of events, with a focus on penance and condemnation structured through a delicate, individual, and twilight reflection.

A directorial and interpretive workshop of subtraction, where the elements and expressions convey everything without emphasizing anything.

Artemio is portrayed by Eustacio Ascacio, a non-professional actor of surprising authenticity.

The theme of fatherhood recurs along with a cursed event that changed the fate of the father/daughter relationship. A daughter found and lost again, a young woman whom fate makes him meet like the mythological Ariadne of the labyrinth to untangle the indelible biographical and psychological paths, the cold and distant bureaucracy, and the unpredictability of a sprawling and violent city.

The neon lights, the contrast of colors, the chaotic streets, and the long hotel corridor perfectly capture the distance and discomfort.

Red Shoes demands silence, reflection, emotion, but above all, the ability to carefully observe a tragic figure who finds himself in a non-place and out of time, both emotionally and geographically.

Violence is simple; the alternatives to violence are complex.

23-Jun-2023 by Fab