SYNOPSIS
This coming-of-age documentary follows Ángel, a boy filmmaker Clarisa Navas first met on a bridge between Argentina and Paraguay. Here, a single structure separates two nations, the air hums with both Guarani and Spanish, and people smuggle goods. On this liminal space, Navas and nine-year-old Ángel begin a relationship that spans a decade. The film is a chronicle of their collaboration and Ángel's journey from childhood to adolescence, shedding light on the resilient vitality of a life unfolding within the layered realities of a borderland.
* This film includes a 15-minute intermission, beginning approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes into the screening. Re-entry will be permitted during the intermission.
REVIEW
This film traces, with quiet precision, a decade of growth and self-discovery in the life of a boy named Ángel. While filming in Nanawa, a small town straddling the Paraguay–Argentina border, the director was captivated by eight-year-old Ángel’s lively, quick-witted presence and soon found himself welcomed into the boy’s home. From that moment, he began chronicling Ángel’s journey from childhood to the threshold of adulthood. Moving beyond the bounds of traditional observational documentary, the film builds an intimacy grounded in shared cinematic empathy. When the director hands Ángel the camera, Ángel turns it toward his own life, becoming an active author of his story. Over ten years, this exchange shapes not only the film but also the boy himself. The mischievous, curious child gradually confronts a more complex reality, wrestling with questions of ethnicity, gender, and class that come to define his place in the world. As their bond deepens, the camera shifts from distant observer to intimate companion—a means through which they participate in and protect one another’s lives.
The Prince of Nanawa is both the portrait of a boy living on a geopolitical fault line and a universal coming-of-age story. Its quiet gravity lies in its profound sense of time and persistence—the ability of documentary to hold a decade within its frame. Here, the long runtime is not an indulgence but the very source of the film’s power.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
The Prince of Nanawa is a lifelong project that has connected me with Ángel ever since our first encounter when he was just a kid at the border between our countries. Nearly a decade has passed since then, and the promise of making this film together has been our shared bond all these years.
CONTACT
Gentil cine srl
produccion.gentil@gmail.com
