“What, then, is mercy in this world? An act of compassion or a survival strategy? A form of love or a way to conceal desire? The film doesn’t say—and perhaps doesn’t want to. But it does suggest that, deep down, all the characters, and maybe we too, are searching for a way to be forgiven. Not for having done something wrong, but simply for having desired.”
“In documentary cinema, there are works that aim to record a process, a transformation, a life. And then there are others that manage to go further, becoming an essential part of the life they portray. The Prince of Nanawa, by Clarisa Navas, is one of those exceptional films. It not only documents a child’s growth over nearly a decade, but also celebrates complicity, attentive listening, and the cinematic act as a form of loving and sustained companionship.”
“The characters in Ariel are beings trapped in an intermediate space where time doesn’t progress linearly, a limbo between wakefulness and sleep, between the living and the dead, which allowed me to reflect on freedom, free will, and how we coexist with the awareness of acting out a destiny that perhaps we did not choose.”
