On board a ferry, a series of passengers cross a river from one riverbank to the other. Some of the travelers wrap themselves in silence and observe the unfamiliar fellow travelers or contemplate the scenery. Some others chat, perhaps to liven up the voyage and speed up time. The journey on the waters seems to expand, the destination shore is postponed, the magnitude of space is blurred. Motion itself is perhaps the only certainty. Year of production 2023 Length 26' CountrySpain Shooting Format16mm Aspect Ratio1.33:1 Dialogue Spanish Director Manuel Muñoz Rivas Producer Manuel Muñoz Rivas Executive ProducerManuel Muñoz Rivas Production Manuel Muñoz Rivas Writer Manuel Muñoz Rivas Cinematographer Mauro Herce, Manuel Muñoz Rivas Editor Manuel Muñoz Rivas Sound Designer José Homer Mora, Luiz Lepchak Sound Recordist Joaquín Pachón Sound Mix Alejandro Castillo Production Manager María Gisèle Royo Website Manuel Muñoz Rivas Festival selections IFFR, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023, Netherlands - World Premiere
Director's Statement With each new film project, it is natural for me to return to the foundational question of "what is cinema", and to engage with this inquiry through a wider formulation: "what can cinema be?". I feel that the commitment of every filmmaker is to carry out a formal exploration through which, hopefully, to broaden the contours of what we expect from cinema as an art. Both as a filmmaker and as a film spectator, I seek astonishment and wonder. I would add that I also seek the revelation of something, a kind of truth, which might comfort me (and others) with a sense of belonging. When I first approached the location where later I would shoot my film “Aqueronte”, the river Guadalquivir and more specifically the ferry boat that crosses it, I was struck by the aesthetic characteristics of the scene. Everything that I identify as defining elements of cinema was there: movement, faces, bodies, landscape, sound atmospheres, light and shadow, reverie, the visible and the latent force of the invisible... all present in the raw material with which to shape fragments of time and space. Because ultimately that is what we filmmakers do: compose with fragments of time and fragments of space.
