Duck Season

»Adolescence has rarely been shown as truthfully on screen as in this charmingly low-key film about a day in the life of two 14-year-old best friends and the pizza, video games, conversations and confusions that fuel them. Teenagers Flama and Moko are left home alone on a Sunday afternoon in their Mexico City suburb, playing video games, listening to music and griping about their parents. But two interlopers interrupt their teenage fantasy: a cute neighbor who needs to use their oven, and a morose pizza delivery guy who doesn’t want to leave. Add a blackout, a forgotten birthday, a hideous duck painting and some potent brownies, and Flama and Moko, as well as their two new friends, have themselves an afternoon to remember.

Winner of a record seven major awards at the recent Guadalajara Film Festival (including Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay), debut director Fernando Eimbcke’s film captures all the energy and ennui of being a young adult—of growing up in a world with few options for the future, and even fewer for the present. Wisely avoiding the typical clichés of urban teens—no guns or gangs here—he instead focuses on the rhythms of everyday life, the speech patterns, the blasé shrugs, the quicksand of friendships and the loneliness behind the bravado. Filmed with a black-and-white aesthetic reminiscent of Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, as memorable for its insights into Mexican society as for its moments of pure comedy, Duck Season promises a bright future indeed for its young director.«
(Jason Sanders from San Francisco Film Society)