Le Monde explained his feeling for the movie Paraguayan Hammock as, “With a look so deep that you enter in the screen shot of life.”

This 78 minutes movie was the first one to be produced in Paraguay in decades, but it had the emotional power and novelty value that helped the movie to reach the front lines of world cinema. This is a single day story line with few dialogs and some still shots, where the day is stated as 14 June 1935. This film was made in the year 2006 which won the FIPRESCI prize, in Festival de Cannes for the same year.

It was based on two characters named Ramon and Candida, who are an aging couple residing in the deep country, where they hung their hammock in between two trees from sunrise to sunset. These two talk about the rain, heat, a dog that doesn’t stop barking and mainly their son Maximo who is part of the Chaco war. This father and mother are awaiting the return of their son, but they do not have any information about him. The father is hoping that his son will return alive, while the mother is having the darkest predictions for which she is worried. Then one day, they come to know that their son has died, as he was hit by a bullet in his heart during the war. The rain eventually makes an appearance and with no desire for dinner, the poor old parents go to sleep.

The old parents were played by Ramon Del Rio and Georgina Genes in this 35mm movie, which is a slow drama. This movie was co-produced by several other countries like Germany, Austria, Argentina, Netherlands, France. The movie is entirely filmed in Paraguay and the language spoken is Guarani. The story is based on the last hours of the war between Bolivia and Paraguay: The Chaco war.

The people behind the camera were:

Camera(color): Willi Behnisch
Editor: Miguel Schverdfinger
Music : Oscar Cardoza Ocampo
Art director: Carlo Spatuzza
Sound(Dolby Digital): Guido Berenblum

Image Authority: The New York Times