After 25 years of a government that became a “dictatorship”, in Venezuela people got used to “survive”, but also to “resist” the economic, political and social breakdown, Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramírez told EFE on Sunday when presenting the film ‘Aún es noche en Caracas’ (It’s still night in Caracas) in Mexico.
“A society was brought to the point of absolute and total survival, that is, you don’t live, you survive and resist. And it has not been five or ten, it has been 25 years. 25 years of the slow but consistent absolute destruction of the social fabric of a country, they have been years of devastation and desolation,” he said in an interview with EFE.
Actor Édgar Ramírez presents his new film
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This devastation has caused four out of every 10 Venezuelan men and women to leave the country in search of a place to live in better conditions in countries such as Mexico and other Latin American countries, but also in Europe, said the producer.
“It is a reality with which all of Latin America and the entire world has had to live face to face. It is the largest displacement crisis in modern times, there are more than eight million people who have been forced to leave the country in order to survive. So (it is necessary) to recover freedom, to recover the rule of law”, he pointed out.
Touching reality
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Edgar Ramirez, 48, visited Guadalajara, in western Mexico, to present the film ‘Aún es de noche en Caracas’, which he co-produced and in which he plays a supporting role.
The story is based on the novel ‘La hija de la española’ by Karina Sainz Borgo in which she portrays a Venezuela plunged into violence, scarcity and lack of freedom.
The film comes at a particularly delicate moment for the South American country following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro on January 3 by a U.S. military commando to try him for alleged narco-terrorism in U.S. courts, a subject on which the actor declined to comment.
The film tells the story of Adelaida Falcón, a woman who, after burying her mother in a decaying Caracas, finds her home invaded by regime militiamen, forcing her to go into hiding and make decisions that defy any conventional code of ethics in order to survive the violence and collapse of her country.
The actor, who has developed an important career in Hollywood with the films ‘Che’ (2008) or ‘Emilia Perez’ (2023), said that the main character is an example of what “totalitarian systems” cause in people.
“These systems debase societies, contaminate them and force the victim to become a victimizer, and you end up realizing that many of the victimizers were victims at some point. That is what totalitarian systems do, they invade all the spaces of your reality until you break down completely”, he considered.
The film -he added- was not made for revenge, but as a way of emphasizing the stories that have survived 25 years of the governments of Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) and Maduro.
“It was very clear that this film had to be an artistic vehicle that told a human story from an intimate perspective, that emphasized the stories of the victims and was not a vehicle for political proselytizing or revenge or finger-pointing,” he stated.
Shot in Mexico and directed by Venezuelan Mariana Rondón and Peruvian Marité Ugás, the film has been screened at the Venice, Morelia and Toronto film festivals.
Filed under: Actor Édgar Ramírez
With information from EFE
