Everything Else (Todo lo Demás)
1h 37m
Directed by Natalia Almada • Drama • With Adriana Barraza • 2016 • 98 minutes
Doña Flor is a bureaucrat. It is in everything that comprises her, her non-descript beige blouse, practical heels and knee-length skirts. For over three decades she has attended frustrated and indignant citizens to whom she is nothing but an invisible, lifeless bureaucrat, and has returned each evening to her cat and solitary apartment where she makes obsessive lists of the people she attended to during the day. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s idea that bureaucracy is one of the worst forms of violence, "Todo lo demás" explores the interior life of Doña Flor as she attempts to resurface. A kind of “observational narrative” the film is a mesmerizing contemplation on solitude.
“A rigorously observed portrait of an isolated middle-aged female factotum, fleshed out via an observational catalogue of fixed shots.” —Variety