"Women of the Venezuelan Chaos," a documentary directed by Margarita Cadenas, will open at Silverspot Cinema this Friday. The film examines the current suffering in Venezuela and has been making the rounds at film festivals throughout Europe.
On Tuesday, there was an advanced screening of the film along with a discussion panel with Cadenas, among others at Silverspot. She lives in France, but holds her home country of Venezuela close to her heart and said she created the film to showcase the turmoil that the country currently faces.
“Now there is real chaos — people die from malnutrition, lack of medicine and lack of food," Cadenas said. "We lost the democracy. We have a dictatorship, but people — they don’t really want to say it’s a dictatorship, but it’s true, it is. In a blink, a country can change because in history, 20 years is a blink. It’s nothing, and a country can be destroyed.”
The film follows five women in Venezuela as they attempt to survive the country’s harsh political and social climate. Coming from different backgrounds and of different ages, they convey the human emotion of living in Venezuela.
“That’s why the cinema is so powerful — when you go to a film and you are in the theater, you get the time to connect emotionally with these people,” Cadenas said. “You really feel how their daily life is, to really imagine. It’s not a picture, it’s not a reportage, it’s more connecting, it’s more emotional.”
According to Cadenas, one of the most concerning things is that the government continues to deny these issues, which also made the film difficult to produce. Not only were women apprehensive to be subjects, but the film had to be shot in secret, then snuck out of the country and will never be able to be screened Venezuela.
However, she said Venezuela is not the film’s intended audience, and instead she hopes foreign audiences experience it and become aware.
“Yes it’s great, 'Rampage' is opening this weekend, 'Black Panther' was awesome and 'Avengers' is coming up, but how important is it to see a film like this on the big screen,” said Randi Emerman, the vice president of programming and strategic partnerships for Silverspot Cinema. “Especially here in North America where we’re so close to what’s happening, but we’re not talking about it.”
Emerman and Cadenas hope the film’s message will resonate with local audiences, as well as UNC students so that things will start to change for the better.
