Angels & Dust
Hector Herrera
2014 - 78 min - HD - Couleur - Espagne

Paco, a music producer and his wife Kene are arrested with plates of cocaine wrapped on their bodies at Panama Airport on their way back to Barcelona. Their baby daughter Sienna, who was traveling with them is taken in by the social services. Paco’s brother, Mauricio, is forced to put his life on hold in Spain and flies to Panama. He wants to help his family whatever the reasons that got them arrested and most of all obtain the custody of the child to bring her back home. As soon as he lands in Panama he meets Fat, an illegal taxi driver. The only contact he has in town - through a friend in Barcelona. Mauricio soon realizes that his brother needs protection in prison. Mauricio is scared, and alone.
While the slow wheels of bureaucracy begin to turn Mauricio is forced to wait and Fat introduces him to his friends: the rapper Japanese and Lolo a former gang member both of them neighbors of the ghettos. Thus Mauricio begins to witness the contradictory reality of a world he could not have imagined. After two months, Mauricio finally gets custody of his niece. He manages to move Paco to a more secure prison where there is a recording studio. Paco’s wife, Kene, has also found a way to adapt and survive in prison through a choir she has created with her fellow inmates. Mauricio can leave the country with Sienna yet he knows he has to return for the trial of his brother and sister in law...
Meanwhile in Panama Paco makes friends in prison and learns to survive and to give a sense to his life. One of his companions and protector is Maton, a killer, who wants to be a singer. As planned Mauricio flies back to Panama and once again hires Fat as a driver. Panama’s justice is slow. The Judges take their time. Mauricio hangs around and seeks company within Fat’s circle of friends, the only people he knows and who help him and his family there.
As a matter of fact Maton, who has just been released, wants to meet him, Japanese wants to visit Paco in prison and Lolo starts to cultivate an unpredictable friendship with Mauricio. Slowly, as time goes by Mauricio’s life merges into the lives of his new companions, the inhabitants of the ghetto. While seeking their protection and friendship he feels scared yet somehow attracted by them and begins to dive in a world he is not prepared to cope with nor to understand.
The sentence comes, Paco and Kene are found guilty. Now, Mauricio has run out of money and has to wait for someone to send him enough cash for a plane ticket. Stuck in a web, he starts to loose his balance.
Mauricio’s last weeks in Panama are the climax of a crudely documented journey that illustrates some of the most striking paradoxes of the human heart as well as contemporary society.