Shown at True/False Film Fest, Montoya’s immensely personal examines the prolonged death of his friend group.
Content Warning: This review discusses the film’s coverage of suicide among the queer community.
“Anhell69,” directed by Theo Montoya, is a dark, heartbreaking film that allows the viewer to peer into life within a broken system. I went into the film as a student who wanted to experience a part of True/False Film Festival, but I left the showing as someone with a deep appreciation for the life that I am able to live.
Shot in Medellín, Colombia, “Anhell69” blends fantasy with reality. Weaving casting footage, originally intended for Montoya’s dystopian fantasy film, and footage of nightclubs that veer on phantasmal, Montoya intimately explores the intersection of loving and dying.
Early on, audiences meet Montoya’s dystopian protagonist, Camilo Najar. However, it is soon revealed he died of a heroin overdose only weeks into production. Najar’s death marks a shift — a transition from fantasy to reality, a crafted dystopia to a lived dystopia. What I felt was already an obvious metaphor for being queer in Colombia became glaringly more apparent.
In several scenes, Montoya lies in the back of a hearse driven around Medellín by Víctor Gaviria — a fellow Colombian filmmaker and Montoya’s inspiration to make films of his own. Interviews of Montoya’s friends sharing their personal beliefs are woven throughout, poignantly reflecting their melancholic belief that they are a group so abused and unseen, that they feel they might as well be dead.
Through the original soundtrack, Montoya allows techno music to drive the narrative of his unconventional friends while connecting to the nightlife that Medellín’s queer scene calls home. For most of the cast, the clubbing community is their only safe haven, and Montoya embraces it.
Slowly finding out that the subjects of the film have all died makes this both a eulogy and a final testament for all of them.At times blunt and veering on insensitive, “Anhell69” is a stark reminder that the film is not a work of fiction. Rather, it is a documentary about human nature — a documentation of a man filming real people in a real place at a real time without intervention.
Hearing Montoya speak on the film at the True/False film fest and seeing him in person cemented me into how real it all is, and the film will continue to resonate with me for quite some time.
“Anhell69” felt incredibly human. What started as a fiction film found its truth by transitioning into a documentary account of Montoya and his friend’s lives. The intimacy Montoya created transcended Medellín, leaving me, half a world away, to feel just as touched by their reality.
Edited by Scout Hudson, shudson@themaneater.comCopy edited by Lauren Courtney