The best kind of goth is the Latino goth. That much is clear throughout this documentary lament for the Colombian city of Medellín, for which director Theo Montoya narrates his elegy from within a casket. Luckily, he is still alive – unlike eight of the doomy-looking LGBTQ+ renegades who speak about their lives on camera here, having killed themselves or died of drug overdoses since filming. It is implied they are victims by proxy of a kind of ambient socio-cultural violence that is a hangover from the cartel days.
Partly constructed out of audition interviews with actor hopefuls, Anhell69 is the remnant of Montoya’s unfinished movie, of which we see extracts: it takes place in a dystopian Medellín in which the preponderance of the dead and a lack of cemetery space has led to red-eyed phantoms walking the streets. These revenants also enjoy horny hookups with living humans, an outbreak of “spectrophilia” that the authorities crack down on. It’s an amusing, camp metaphor for something in plain sight: the disdain and harassment that the city’s LGBTQ+ population undergo daily. First among this band is the 21-year-old Montoya has picked out for the lead role: doe-eyed Camilo, whose soft-smiling nihilism draws him in.
Collaging his abandoned film, candid insights from his queer comrades, rapturous goth-rave sequences, protest footage and galactic-looking Medellín cityscapes, Montoya hopes this amounts to a “cinema of unbelievers” (inspired by Colombian neorealist Víctor Gaviria, who cameos here as a taxi driver). But his ambitions go even further: he aspires to make work that is truly transgressive, crossing boundaries as fluidly as his spectrophiliac squad break gender lines.
Anhell69 blurs the divisions of reality and fiction effectively enough – but it’s debatable how feasible Montoya’s radicalism is in constructing an alternative future. Many of the quixotic hopes expressed here are tackily banal: “I want to be Hollywood’s bitch!” declares one reveller. The traumatic past hems these night folk in as impassably as the surrounding mountains; it’s striking how many talk, in the absence of a viable future, about simply existing in the present moment. New horizons might be elusive – but Montoya strives hard in this fanciful and impassioned piece of cine-protest to create a breach for his tribe to see one.
• Anhell69 is on True Story from 5 September.
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
