Qué tan lejos is a 2006 film directed by Ecuadorian filmmaker Tania Hermida. The film is a road movie co-produced by Ecuador and Spain, and it stars Tania Martinez and Cecilia Vallejo as an Ecuadorian student and a Spanish tourist, respectively, who met each other in a bus and take rides together when the roads are blocked because of a strike.
The directorial debut of Hermida, Qué tan lejos was meant to be an ironic reflection about identity and difference. The film satirizes folkloric-like and tourist-like images about Ecuador and Latin American in general. The journey the main characters go through reflect the director's reading of Mexican writer Octavio Paz's book El mono gramático discussion about the search for a meaning. Some commentators noted the protagonist's trip is a self-discovery journey analogous to that of a Bildungsroman.
Hermida had the plot idea in 1997 but only started to produce the film in 2003. Filming was entirely done in Ecuador during 2005, while post-production finished in 2006.
The film internationally premiered at the 2006 Montreal World Film Festival, where it won a Silver Zenith award for directorial debut film. Following that, it was released nationwide in Ecuador in September 2006. The film was a box office hit; it played for six months in theaters and attracted 220,000 viewers in Ecuador. This figure made the film the second most seen film in the history of the country. Following a tour across other major film festivals in São Paulo International Film Festival, Havana Film Festival, Guadalajara, and Moscow, Qué tan lejos was also released in Spain, France, Switzerland and Austria.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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