‘Elvira & Fadoul’ is indeed a special movie because it uses a remarkable technique that will be hard to understand for some, and amazing for others. The movie features real life puppets, no spoken dialogue, a score that is soothing you heart, and a narrative that is so Zen it will make your mind implode.

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From the first scene, we thought it was a joke, and seemed quite hard to follow the story the way we have done it on a movie with spoken dialogue and build-up narrative. But ‘Elvira & Fadoul’ was a totally different; apart from being extremely provoking, we felt it a little bit as a music video that could be suitable for one of ‘The National’s’ brand new tracks ‘Nobody else will be there’ (listen to the song whilst watching the video and you will see!).

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The dialogue parts were our favorite because they weren’t built in a traditional spoken way; we’ve understood more from the small gestures of the characters, from their actions, and from the brilliant score that coagulated all the elements together under the same sky.

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The characters, even though they were real life puppets, were interesting enough to care for them. This technique is hard to use, and to deliver the right message is almost impossible if you don’t give your best. Carolina Pimentel and Graciela Miguel Hacha did their best and made it all worthwhile, as the final result was way over our initial expectations.

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Adrian Rodriguez won our respect and deep appreciation with this short, as he did something we haven’t had in our festival so far, a short film with real life puppets, with a deep Zen narrative that is a great life lesson for any age, and with a score that really told the story words couldn’t cover. From our point of view, that’s really something young directors especially should be looking up to!

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Written by Vlad A. G