Keep an eye out for Los Fuertes (The Strong Ones), the 2019 debut feature written and directed by Chilean film maker Omar Zuniga Hidalgo. I saw it at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.
Lucas (Samuel Gonzalez), a young architect from Santiago, has won a scholarship to study in Montreal. He is estranged from his parents because he is gay. Before he leaves for Canada, he travels by bus and ferry to the south of Chile to visit his doctor sister Cata (Marcela Salinas) and her partner (Rafael Contreras). There he meets Antonio (Antonio Altamirano), the grandson of Cata's housekeeper. Antonio is the first mate on a fishing trawler. Lucas and Antonio fall rapidly into an intensely passionate and tender romance, but they have to make hard choices. I found the latter part of the film quite suspenseful.
The lovers have to face some social hostility. Though they respond to it in different ways, both men are equally independent and strong willed. Their story is complex, but does not end in tragedy. The director sees both men, who are already fully accepting of their orientation, becoming more mature adults through the experience.
Los Fuertes was shot in the historic coastal town of Niebla and the city of Valdivia in the Los Rios (The Rivers) region. Antonio is deeply attached to the island where he grew up with his grandmother, the bay and the town. Many scenes are filmed by Nicolas Ibieta featuring Antonio and Lucas in the stunning landscapes of fog, sea, eroded rock formations, forests, rivers and ruined fortresses. The film also shows the characters embedded in the daily life of the town.
The love scenes are very erotic and sensuous and in other scenes, each man looks at the other in ways that suggest a very genuine feeling.
Producer Dominga Sotomayor describes the film as "a story of love, heartrending and complex, but above all political, with two young people who search for, and defend their [place in the world, not allowing themselves to ridden roughshod over by hostility."
Highly recommended.
