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In a dystopian future, with a social context influenced by various pandemics and with a political upheaval triggering reactionary governments, various young people hide on the outskirts of a city after looting a batch of vaccines. While the leaders of the group seek to sell them on the black market, the subjugated try to get their distribution among the marginal population who, like them, are deprived of vaccination. Tensions and discrimination based on sexuality or ethnicity soon arise in the group, reminiscent of past times, and that are the reflection of a society that has regressed. Desire and melancholy will mark characters stunned by a reality that is as fickle as unpredictable.
Luca, a young photographer, arrives in a village in Asturias to work on an artistic project. There, he stays with Xuan, an experienced cheesemaker who is marked by a past full of rumors and prejudice. Through Luca’s camera and Xuan’s craft, the two discover unexpected connections in an intimate encounter between two seemingly opposite worlds.
“Majo” Tonorio, a.k.a. Filly Brown, is a raw, young Los Angeles hip-hop artist who spits from the heart. When a sleazy record producer offers her a crack at rap stardom, Majo faces some daunting choices. With an incarcerated mother, a record contract could be the ticket out for her struggling family. But taking the deal means selling out her talent and the true friends who helped her to the cusp of success.
Spain, 19th century. In a small coastal village, Olalla and her family prepare to live a very special night, during which it is mandatory to comply with a single rule: no light must remain on.
Kerry Candaele’s second Beethoven film (after Following the Ninth) explores the composer’s only opera, Fidelio, through the lens of a contemporary political context: the long shadow of Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Jorge Pena Hen was a composer and conductor. He was also among the tens of thousands arrested and killed after the coup which brought down the democratically-elected socialist Allende government. Restaging Fidelio in an abandoned factory in Valparaíso, Candaele meets Pena Hen’s granddaughter, Maria, who dedicates her art form — Butoh dance — to memorializing her grandfather, and sees surprising echoes of the opera in her tale. Love & Justice has it all: Beethoven’s stirring music and singing, history, politics, but above all it’s an inspiring testament to the enduring power of creativity and artistic expression, even in the hardest times.
