Luis Fernando Midence | Sin Ruta (Without Direction) / 2012

the unforgiven

by Douglas Messerli

 

Luis Fernando Midence (screenwriter and director) Sin Ruta (Without Direction) / 2012 [21 minutes]

 

This movie begins with two men on the run from the police, a gay musician, Teo (Oscar Clavería) who, having been brutally attacked, is attempting to flee Guatemala, and Ray Blanning (Dereck Garner), an American doctor working in Guatemala who has accidentally killed a patient back in the US.

  We are introduced to both men attempting to escape, but the story is told in retrospect and sometimes with scenes out of chronological order, first presenting us a scene that shows Teo attempting to raise money to leave the country through his singing. He is met head-on with two thugs who call him a faggot and chase after him, eventually cornering him and beating him almost to death.

    Meanwhile, the American doctor Ray, encountering a woman having a reaction to raw tap water, gives his patient a dose of penicillin, without realizing she is allergic to it. She almost dies, infuriating the husband (Andrea Castillo) who, we later realize, calls the police.

    Ray also has a drug problem; apparently he has a cocaine habit, which, of course, further threatens his medical viability. Yet he has no desire to return to the US—for reasons we know nothing about—and, as we witness early in the film, is ready to toss away his US passport, precisely to where Teo is heading.

    Soon after, Teodoro Ramírez enters the clinic, falling to the floor in exhaustion the moment he enters. When Ray attempts to help him, he refuses to remove his shirt, the doctor eventually convincing him to let him take it off, finding the words “Faggot with AIDS” written across his chest in black magic marker.

    Ray simply asks the nurse for something to remove the ink from Teo’s chest, as he gives him an anti-inflammatory for his face.

    “Have you reported this to the authorities?” Ray asks.

    “They won’t care,” responds Teo.

    Teo describes Ray as being lucky because in the States there are laws protecting people from the thing that is happening to him.

     “There’s still a lot a hatred toward gays in America,” Ray announces.

   “You can get married there, and you can go into the army. Can you imagine anything like that happening here?”

     When doctor and nurse finally begin to wipe away the ink, Teo brakes down in tears, realizing that his hope to escape has been for naught. He has lost all his money, his clothes, and has really nothing anymore. And yet there is no turning back.

     As Ray provides him with a relaxant, he comments that it’s not much better in the states and that he understands what it is to have lost almost everything in your life.

    On the internet Ray is communicating with his US lawyer Anthony (Luis Fernando Midence), who seems to be reporting that his wife has gotten a divorce. The lawyer suggests he return to the US, and they’ll blame the death on his addiction, Ray interrupting to declare that he doesn’t have an addiction. “There’s no way I can come back and not be a doctor. This is what I am and what I do.”

    “You know that there was no way I could have meant to kill that patient. I wasn’t even supposed to be there that day. …I’ve lost my wife…and my job. What do I gain by going back?”

     “What do you gain by hiding,” asks the lawyer.

     Suddenly the doctor is needed in the emergency room. It is the announcement of Teo’s arrival, the scene which we have previously witnessed.

      We now see the package of his money, keys, and other goods that we have observed Ray preparing in a very early scene, delivered up to Teo. “Dr. Blanning left this for you,” the male nurse reports.

     There is a note expressing that he hopes the things within will help him to his destination.

     “Do you think things are better over there?” asks Teo of the nurse.

     “Some things are better. But not everything,” the nurse replies. “Depends what you’re looking for.”

     The “authorities” are, in fact, the major problem in both worlds, as Ray has again gone on the run because of his having mistakenly given his patient penicillin, to which, we perceive, he was told she was allergic.

     Given the authorities any immigrant must face today in the US of President Trump, Midence was almost prophetic, as people like Teo who fought to find a world in which they might be protected are now returned home or sent to even worse imprisonment in Honduras or small African nations. Does the US truly subscribe to law? Perhaps, but it depends, for whom or what purposes. People like the two men in this film are caring individuals rejected for no obvious reasons other than their mistakes and their differences from the majority throughout much of the unforgiving world.

 

Los Angeles, January 3, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026)

Vincent Fitz-Jim | Daniël (Daniel) / 2012

house by the river

by Douglas Messerli

 

Martijn Cousijn and Vincent Fitz-Jim (screenplay), Vincent Fitz-Jim (director) Daniël (Daniel) / 2012 [8 minutes]

 

This lovely Dutch coming of age movie has no dialogue, leading the viewer through it’s simple moment of transcendence through the acting, the lovely images, and its music (by The Album Leaf).

   A young boy (Bas de Vries), dressed in a yellow shirt, rides through the fields on his bike before laying down among marigolds for a morning nap, having travelled to a spot by the river. Suddenly, from a tree overhead, a small sparrow falls beside him. As he scoops it up to protect and nurse him, he suddenly sees another image shadowing over him, a lovely young girl (Eva Oosters), carrying a large stick in her hand.

    Before he can even begin to realize what is happening, she has rowed him by boat to a lovely house on the river’s edge. There she presents him with birdcage, in which the boy happily places he injured bird, and smiles deeply at the boy, obviously seeing him as a possible new boyfriend.

    The boy and girl go swimming, joined by the brother; but it quickly becomes clear the boy prefers the company of the brother to the sister.

    Soon after, however, the two, the boy and the girl lie in the grass to dry off, while the brother remains on the small dock looking off into the water. The girl gets up, dries off, and moves inside, applying eyebrow pencil to her lashes, determined to attract the newcomer.

    A few minutes later, her good-looking older brother (Frederik Stuut), slightly older also than the boy, appears, watching the bird in the cage and, in particular, keeping his eye on his sister’s new catch.

   But the two boys, in the meantime, catch each other’s glance, returning to the birdcage where they check up on the bird and gradually move toward each other for a kiss.

   However, before they can join up, the bird falls from its swing to the floor of the cage, the girl suddenly appearing from the other side and whisking the cage off is if it never existed.

    In the next frames we can see the two boys burying the dead sparrow, their hands brushing across one another’s as they proceed.

     The girl stands up against the house, obviously in a fit of pique, as her brother now rows the boy back to where he had originally begun his morning journey. He deposits him back to where the has left his bicycle, gently kissing him on the cheek before the boy rides off.

     Gay teenage love was never so beautifully innocent as in this film.

 

Los Angeles, January 3, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).