So Foul A Sky
True Stories
Watch on TRUE STORIES
Runtime 83 min
2022
CPH DOX
Next Wave Award (nominated)
2021
INDIELISBOA INTERNATIONAL INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL
BEST FEATURE FILM (NOMINEE)
2021
DMZ INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL
WHITE GOOSE AWARD (NOMINEE)
2021
ATHENS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
BEST DOCUMENTARY (NOMINEE)
The Guardian
“courageous lament for Venezuela’s oil-stained self-destruction”
Phil Hoad
We Love Cinema
“an effective study of the self-inflicted hopelessness of the 21st century world”
Jack Blackwell
Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo – SO FOUL A SKY presents a hypnotic odyssey into the frontiers of a collapsing nation: Venezuela. From drifting Mariachis on the forgotten southern border, to petrol smugglers in the desert, a car drives through a decaying petrol-city to a soundscape of formless voices.
Under shadows cast by colossal oil refineries, emerging from the desert like chrome cathedrals, SO FOUL A SKY presents a journey through several frontier lands of Venezuela – the world’s first petro-state – now shaken by the worst political and humanitarian crisis South America has experienced in the 21st century.
While storm clouds gather in the skies, sleepy soldiers patrol the Caribbean Seas, migrants drift through lugubrious border posts between Brazil and Venezuela, and smugglers venture across the hostile Guajira Desert, trafficking the last remaining barrels of embargoed gasoline. All is enveloped by scrambled radio newsreels fired from both sides of the ideological struggle ripping the capital apart.
This is a film portraying pirates and pilgrims, orphaned children of a land that they have made their own without planting flags or imposing anthems; anarchic just like the hovering storm clouds threatening to put an end to the limbo all inhabit. SO FOUL A SKY clears not without a storm.