Vulcanizadora

2024 / Dir. Joel Potrykus / 85 minutes

Beginning as a passive and seemingly mundane slice-of-life story that embraces the techniques of slow cinema, before descending into the bowels of bleak, pitch-black humor, and dark existentialism, Joel Potrykus’ Vulcanizadora is a sad movie that explores the emotional pain of arrested development, and how it feels to be seen as nothing more than the sum of our previous actions. Gorgeously shot on 16mm against a lush forest backdrop, the genre-bending film takes a grim outlook on adult life, fluctuating between quirky comedic peaks and devastatingly tragic troughs. It effectively portrays loneliness and the weight of guilt-ridden devastation with delicate aplomb, and as a “feel bad” film it hits all the right downtrodden notes.