'Simón:' Director Diego Vicentini Talks About His Controversial Film

Diego Vicentini’s Simón takes on Venezuela’s totalitarian government by creating a taut and visceral non-linear cinematic experience, based on factual accounts, about one young man’s harrowing journey from organized protester to prisoner to U.S. asylum seeker.
Simón (a fierce Christian McGaggney) is haunted by past events in his native Venezuela where he and an organized group of students protested the growing lack of freedom and increase in poverty in their country. Simón and a fellow compatriot is betrayed by one of their own and both are captured, tortured and threatened unless they sign a statement asking fellow student protesters to stop. We witness the cruelty through flashbacks peppered into the narrative.
Now in Miami, hoping for political asylum, Simon is guilt, angst and anxiety-ridden. Jana Nawartschi plays a paralegal who tries to help Simón attain asylum.
The Venezuelan Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (a very different group than the one that selects the Oscar submissions) selected Simón to represent the country at this year’s Goya Awards where it did, indeed, receive a nomination for Best Ibero-American Film.
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