Anhell69 review – an impassioned eulogy for Colombia’s queer renegades

Theo Montoya collages an unfinished phantom horror film, gothic Medellín cityscapes and interviews with lost friends into a transgressive work of cine-protest

The best kind of goth is the Latino goth. That much is clear throughout this documentary lament for the Colombian city of Medellín, for which director Theo Montoya narrates his elegy from within a casket. Luckily, he is still alive – unlike eight of the doomy-looking LGBTQ+ renegades who speak about their lives on camera here, having killed themselves or died of drug overdoses since filming. It is implied they are victims by proxy of a kind of ambient socio-cultural violence that is a hangover from the cartel days.

Partly constructed out of audition interviews with actor hopefuls, Anhell69 is the remnant of Montoya’s unfinished movie, of which we see extracts: it takes place in a dystopian Medellín in which the preponderance of the dead and a lack of cemetery space has led to red-eyed phantoms walking the streets. These revenants also enjoy horny hookups with living humans, an outbreak of “spectrophilia” that the authorities crack down on. It’s an amusing, camp metaphor for something in plain sight: the disdain and harassment that the city’s LGBTQ+ population undergo daily. First among this band is the 21-year-old Montoya has picked out for the lead role: doe-eyed Camilo, whose soft-smiling nihilism draws him in.

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