Fernando Arze Echalar
Director, Actor and Screenwriter
"Foreigners" won "best short film", "best leading actor" and "best production design" awards at the 2019-2020 Amalia de Gallardo Short Film Competition, the most prestigious short film competition in Bolivia.
Fernando Arze Echalar is considered one of the prominent cinema actors in Bolivia and has been honoured many times for his outstanding achievements, including "best foreign actor" in the Gramado International Film Festival in Brazil, and "best screenwriter" in the 2019 Jujuy International Film Festival in Argentina.
He is merging from directing theatre pieces onto film, and is part of the new wave of films showcasing Bolivia around the world.
This short film explores the mercy of a man who rescues a homeless from a street fight and invites him to stay in his flat. The homeless later shows aversion and intolerance towards his rescuer's foreign neighbours.The duration of this short film is 22 minutes.
At the end of the 1950's in La Paz, Bolivia, a lonely man, Florentino, rescues a homeless man, Felix, from a street fight and offers him to stay in his flat. Both men live the collateral effects of the badly articulated 1952 revolution, and the advances of science versus the freedom of men. Felix settles into Florentino's flat and meets the foreign neighbours. Felix demonstrates his aversion to them, the foreigners "invading" his country, showing openly an intolerance that Florentino does not share.