The 28th “Reel” Latin American Film Festival
The Awakening of the Ants
(El despertar de las hormigas )Director: Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, Costa Rica, Spain, 2019
Length: 94 minutes
About the film:https://pragda.com/film/the-awakening-of-the-ants/?sfc=1
Rating: NR (Brief sex and nudity)
LIVE screenings:
Showtime(s) and location(s):
Wednesday, September 22, 5:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Wednesday, September 22, 7:30 p.m., Floyd Theater
Introduction: Manuel Medina, Department of Classical and Modern Languages, University of Louisville
Watch this film between 9/25/2021and 10/1/2021.
Credentials needed
Post-screening discussion led by Bailey Spalding, Department of Classical and Modern Languages, University of Louisville
on Friday, October 1 at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom.
Showtime(s) and location(s):
Wednesday, September 22, 5:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Wednesday, September 22, 7:30 p.m., Floyd Theater
Introduction: Manuel Medina, Department of Classical and Modern Languages, University of Louisville
Virtual screening:
Watch this film between 9/25/2021and 10/1/2021.
Credentials needed
on Friday, October 1 at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom.
For thoughtful, demure young housewife Isa, life in a lush, postcard-perfect Costa Rican seaside village is far from anyone’s idea of a dream. She is being pressured by her intrusive and loudly opinionated in-laws to have another baby – a boy – even as her already cramped household struggles to stay afloat. She tends to the needs of her husband and two daughters while her own desires remain distant and ignored.
Isa finds herself suffocated by rigid gender roles and the cloistered, provincial thinking that comes with small-town life. Desperately imagining some other way of living—single, childless, desired—while growing increasingly tense towards those closest to her, Isa finds herself at a breaking point awakening to the possibilities of a life lived on her own terms, in this engrossing and intimate feature debut from writer/director Antonella Sudasassi Furniss.
Para Isa, una joven ama de casa reflexiva y recatada, la vida en una aldea costarricense exuberante y perfecta como una postal está lejos de ser la idea de un sueño para cualquiera. Ella está siendo presionada por sus suegros intrusos y ruidosamente obstinados para que tenga otro bebé, un niño, aún cuando lucha por mantenerse a flote en un hogar ya abarratado. Atiende las necesidades de su esposo y sus dos hijas, mientras que sus propios deseos permanecen distantes e ignorados.
Isa se encuentra asfixiada por los rígidos roles de género y el pensamiento provinciano y enclaustrado que acompaña la vida de un pueblo pequeño. Imaginando desesperadamente otra forma de vida - soltera, sin hijos, deseada - mientras se pone cada vez más tensa hacia los más cercanos a ella, Isa se encuentra en un punto de ruptura despertando a las posibilidades de una vida en sus propios términos, en esta fascinante e íntima película debut de la guionista y directora Antonella Sudasassi Furniss.