CLFF 2026: It Would Be Night in Caracas
Venezuela. It’s been in the news this year for various reasons, most notably after the U.S. military captured President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026. This has led to a major political transition, the rise of interim leader Delcy Rodríguez, and the start of a “purge” of Maduro loyalists. The situation involves U.S.-led efforts to restructure the oil/mining industries, release political prisoners, and hold new elections. However, not many know that almost a decade ago, Venezuela experienced a severe, multifaceted crisis characterized by intense anti-government protests, a constitutional breakdown, a deepening economic collapse, and widespread violent repression. 2017 was marked by months of daily demonstrations aimed at removing President Nicolás Maduro, resulting in high casualties, with over 160 deaths and thousands of arrests. The latest film from directors Mariana Rondón and Marité Ugás, “It Would Be Night in Caracas,” recreates the chaos of the Venezuelan riots that year into a gripping apocalyptic nightmare.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September and recently had its Chicago premiere as the Opening Night film for the Chicago Latino Film Festival (CLFF). The Venezuelan/Mexican production was filmed in Mexico and Colombia; the country’s capital is convincingly portrayed as a city on the verge of collapse.
Rondón and Ugás also co-wrote the screenplay, which adapts the novel of the same name from Karina Sainz Borgo, and follows Adelaida (an excellent Natalia Reyes, “Terminator: Dark Fate”), a young woman who must fend for herself on the dystopian streets of Caracas. When we meet Adelaida, she has just buried her mother, who has died recently from cancer. We get an idea of the kind of societal climate she is dealing with when she witnesses a disruptive, anarchic biker gang as she’s driven through the cemetery. The gravedigger had already encouraged her to leave quickly, noting how unsafe the area is, especially after sundown.
As much as Adelaide tries to lay low in the high-rise apartment she shared with her mother, the volatile environment around her won’t let her grieve. She is at an impasse, unable to pack up and leave or even sort through her belongings. The shouting inside her building is in concert with the banging and shooting from the street below. One day, after scouring the shelves in the few remaining stores that are open, Adelaide returns to her apartment and finds it overrun by a faction of the self-ordained resistance militia, led by the fearsome Mariscala (a fiery Sheila Monterola). Kicked out, she’s forced to silently live in the vacant apartment across the hall, where her childhood friend, Aurora Peralta used to reside, but things get even more complicated and stressful when she finds Aurora lying dead on the kitchen floor. Without much hope or any real options, she decides to take advantage of her newfound situation by gradually taking over Aurora’s identity as a way out of the country. Opportunism takes over morality in this situation, and it’s hard to judge Adelaide’s actions in such desperate times, when survival is the sole focus.
What’s immediately striking about “It Would Be Night in Caracas” is the film’s captivating mise-en-scene, which often has a surreal vérité style, thanks to Juan Pablo Ramírez’s impressively dynamic camerawork. When Adelaide is on the hostile street at night, the camera glides around her, capturing the chaos she finds herself in with a gripping intensity. The fear and recklessness on the streets is palpable, as violence erupts between military police and the rioters. The atmospheric cinematography can also be found in the interior, where the low-lit spaces Adelaide inhabits become places to either hide or regroup. The steely editing from Soledad Salfate also adds to the film’s thrilling tone, as the politics of the recent past remain on the periphery while the focus on characters is heightened.
When Adelaide isn’t focused on her current situation, she flashes back to memories of her childhood, spending time with her mother and a young Aurora. We also get brief flashes with her former lover, Francesco (Edgar Ramírez), which seems to conjure a past intimacy that Adelaide laments. More complications come when Santiago (Moisés Angola), a paranoid twentysomething peer and brother of a friend whom she had believed incarcerated, shows up suddenly, and Adelaida reluctantly shelters him. Will he jeopardize her clandestine squatting or somehow help her find a way out of her seemingly hopeless situation?
In the lead role as Adelaide, the captivating Reyes is commanding in every frame, deftly conveying nuance to a complicated, and often conflicted, character. Her compelling character arc is one of the reasons it’s easy to suspend judgment of Adelaide, and she is also a character facing decisions that, hopefully, very few of us will ever experience. She exudes a convincing blend of resilience and vulnerability that helps viewers get on board with her plight.
The film’s oddly phrased title almost suggests wistfulness, as if the titular location is just a thought, something that no longer exists. Maybe the title suggests a place and time that exists if war zones and dangerous feuds didn’t exist. It’s possible the novel is more descriptive, perhaps poetically aligning itself with the title. As an adaptation, the pacy, first-person, ground-level perspective that Rondón and Ugás offer is notable primarily for its often terrifying realism, making it quite memorable.
RATING: ***1/2
