Opening with unearthly looking shots of Venezuela’s hulking oil refineries, this strikingly photographed documentary is a lament in response to the political and humanitarian crisis the country has faced in the last decade. As per the title, director Álvaro F Pulpeiro has a habit of looking frequently to the skies, casting them in an aghast, high-contrast yellow and indigo, as if the spillage of this petrostate’s woes has tainted something spiritual in the higher order of things.
Interspersing it all with radio commentary discoursing on million per-cent inflation and the disputed 2018 election, and poetry extracts tolling the bell for the country itself, Pulpeiro roams Venezuela in search of telling vignettes: soldiers firing ordnance off navy vessels in the Caribbean, refugees joining the exodus into Brazil, a recurring ride-along with a man transporting a newborn child (a symbol of hope, or maybe hopelessness).
