No es por gusto...

After seeing the wonderful The Volunteer (2022-also reviewed) I took a look at what else was being shown at the HOME cinema VIVA:The 29th Spanish & Latin American Manchester Film Festival, and was happy to discover that the the Invisible Women collective were presenting three obscure short films being screened with English Subtitles, which led to me discovering the Cine Mujer.

View on the film:

Walking the camera down every backstreet on the outskirts of the city, co-directors Maria del Carmen de Lara & Maria Eugenia Tames record a visceral New Wave direct camera atmosphere, via extremely fluid, hand-held camera moves running through the households towards interviews with sex workers, who the makers give a great level of free room to directly speak to the camera, with the directors holding a restrained approach on editing, in order to fully capture the workers expressing themselves.

Taking an empathetic stance, the directors capture in overlapping dissolves the dehumanizing treatment police officers and doctors hold the sex workers in, with any attempt made to create a safe work environment for the workers, being ripped up by the police, who leave those they arrest in a vicious cycle of receiving huge fines that leave them penniless, with the only option left for them being to go back work on the streets again, until they again get arrested.