California!!

Thrilled to announce that VERTICES, by Arturo López Rodas, has been selected to compete at the amazing Santa Clarita International Film Festival, California.

The festival will take place from 10 to 13 December, and the screenings will be held at the modern Laemmle Theatres in the beautiful town of Santa Clarita.

VERTICES is the debut feature film by the talented young Central American director Arturo López Rodas, El Salvador’s official candidate for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film.

Arturo López Rodas continues to win over the US. Just this week, he presented the film at the prestigious AFI Latin American Film Festival, with two screenings that captivated both the audience and the press.

A month ago, it also won the Best Feature Film Award at the Cobb International Film Festival.

Arturo López Rodas about VERTICES:

Close friends usually grow apart over time. Life happens and treats people differently. The first draft of my script was about a group of old friends reuniting for someone’s birthday. I had just seen Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice” and I was inspired to make a story with a similar setting.
I sent my script to my good friend and filmmaker Francisco Menendez. I wanted his always wise feedback and, also, I wanted to shoot at the place where he grew up. His mom had passed a few months back and he was looking to turn the big old house into a true film school, which we don’t have in El Salvador.
“Of course”, he said. “I’ll read it on the weekend”. I don’t know if he ever read it. He had a heart attack a couple of days later.
I changed my script. Now it took place after a funeral.
Vertices is a story about death and the need to understand and assimilate everything that it entails. It’s about my friends, but it’s also about my father and my friends’ parents, who are no longer with us. It’s a little bit about the people who leave and a little more about the people who stay. It is a reflective exercise in which the actors integrated their life experiences and developed their characters, enriching the plot. I am eternally grateful to be able to share something so personal.