NZIFF 2019 Litigante

Directed by: Franco Lolli

Set in Bogotá, Colombia, Franco Lolli’s excellent character study focuses on a lawyer struggling to care for her young son and ailing mother amidst a developing scandal at work.

This fiercely lived-in maternal drama of a woman juggling extreme professional and familial pressures draws its compelling naturalism from Colombian director Franco Lolli’s real-life mother and cousin, who star in the lead roles.

“Coping with a mother dying of cancer, a young son she’s raising without a partner and a scandal at work leaves public-sector lawyer Silvia (an immensely watchable Carolina Sanin) a woman on the verge of despair… Silvia lives with her five-year-old son Antonio… but has childcare help from her gay best friend… Sergio… as well as her sister, Maria-Jose (Alejandra Sarria), and mother, Leticia (Leticia Gomez).

But the fast-metastasizing return of Leticia’s cancer, a disease she beat back temporarily a few years ago at great cost, means the juggling act for Silvia and her family will be even harder. On top of that, she’s been swept up in a simmering corruption charge at the municipal department where she works as the deputy legal officer…

The movie often nails the fractiousness, fear and pain of caring for a dying loved one, driven home by immaculate performances from Sanin, Gomez and Sarria as two generations of women with more in common than they might like to admit.” — Leslie Felperin, Hollywood Reporter