Quentin Lazzarotto | Carlito se va para siempre (Carlito Leaves Forever) / 2018

the escape

by Douglas Messerli

Quentin Lazzarotto (screenwriter and director) Carlito se va para siempre (Carlito Leaves Forever) / 2018 [8 minutes] 

Seemingly trapped in the small riverside village of Palma Real, Peru deep in the Amazonian jungle, Carlito (Carlito Tirira Meshi) determines, under continued abuse, to simply escape is world. With a brief goodbye to his grandmother, who agrees it is best for him to leave given that he is “different,” he steals a small engine powered canoe, he quickly moves down to a nearby village where his male lover (Pastor Posho Via'eja) is waiting, the two them determining to move on to wherever….it is never revealed. But he and his friend are most definitely moving on forever: there is no coming back.

      Such events happen by the thousands throughout the world every day, but perhaps none quite as dramatic given the powerful waters through which Carlito must navigate, where there is a real fear that they will not make it to whatever urban center they are heading.

       The film, mentored by German filmmaker Werner Herzog most definitely shows his influence. Yet in this film there is no toil or suffering, no monsters to be faced, just a hopeful escape for the two young men into a more accepting and open world previously unavailable in his modern-day village. One wonders, as a commentator noted, whether at an earlier time someone like Carlito might have been given a role in the community; but clearly in the now Roman Catholic based village there is no space for him.

      Yet the movie has no room for regrets or recriminations, only focusing on the boy’s determination to find a new world in which to exist. And that is the purity and full wonder of this truly simple but nonetheless, compelling short movie.

      French filmmaker Quentin Lazzarotto represents a new young talent if he can take on different material as well.

 

Los Angeles, September 13, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).