LOCARNO Tiempo Libre, the Lima-based production house behind Peruvian Oscar candidate Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes), has boarded Valves (Valvas), the second feature film from Andrea Hoyos, whose feature debut Autoerotic, established her as one of the forthright rising stars of Perus still expanding film industry.
Verony Centeno, a Peruvian actress with significant experience in film and dance, is attached as the films lead.
Hoyos is at Locarno as part of its Directors Club at Open Doors, its major Latin American project and talent platform. She is also screening Autoerotic as part of its Open Doors screenings.
Hoyos follow-up, Valves, is now set up at Episodio 14, its main production company and also based in Peru, and Tiempo Libre. Perus Lady Vinces and Juan Daniel Frnandez Molero are serving as producers. Videophilia won a Rotterdam Tiger Award.
In development, and seeking further co-producers, said Hoyos, Valves is described as a road movie that touches on themes such as trans masculinity, relationships, and fear of the unknown.
It turns on Verony, a young dancer, who is accompanying her partner, Marte, a photographer, through his gender transition process.
Both decide to take a road trip to the north coast of Peru where they spend New Years Eve with Martes family. In the north, spondylus shells are being washed up from the seas. These awaken a connection with beings from the Beyond, the synopsis says. Both Verony and Marte fear that they may need to take different paths, both in travel and in life, it ends.
Its a film that speaks about resistance to change and the necessity of transformation. Its the largest project Ive started writing at this moment, and also the most personal. The pains of love, grief, and gender intertwine in a universe of fantasy portraying our real fears, Hoyos toldVariety.
The film also looks to continue Hoyos focus on what she calls narratives about what it means to inhabit certain bodies, marked by sex and gender, themes which are prominent in Autoerotic.
Hailed as marking a fresh voice on Perus film scene, Autoeroticstarts out as coming-of-age drama, which rings totally true whether in scenes of Bruna, 15, with her best girlfriend, or grating at her mothers latest live-in boyfriend, or using a dating app to lose her virginity as soon as can.
Starring Rafaella Mey as Bruna, Autoerotic soon expands, however, to explore sexual and reproductive rights in aconservative Peru.
Having studied filmmaking at EPIC in Peru, Hoyos is currently completing a masters in creative film at Catalyst (Berlin). Her first short film,2017s Arrecifes,won Perus national short film competition. Part of Berlinale Talents 2023, Hoyos next installation project, is a co-production between
Peru and Germany, entitled Crip 3, an experimental film depicting the process of diagnosis of her chronic illness, dysautonomia, as a diary using new media.