PRODUCTION:

Directors / Writers:

“El Síndrome de esto es el colmo” is co-written and co-directed by Mariana Tschudi, Katja Kulenkampff and Franziska Agrawal. Mariana Tschudi, as the only native Spanish speaker, directs the shootings, while Franziska Agrawal is in charge of photography and Katja Kulenkampff the art direction. Nevertheless, the most important decisions are always taken beforehand by mutual consent.

Characters:

Diana Ascoy as CATALINA PEÑA

Cati, (Catalina anglicized) is a typical "bad girl" (her character is based on the main character of the novel "The adventures of the bad girl" by Mario Vargas Llosa). She is a femme fatal. Very pretty, sexy and reckless, she loves an active social life and has very expensive tastes. Cati follows the lure of both power and wealth and is constantly looking to move up the social ladder. Cati purports to be from the wealthy Lima social class, but actually comes from very humble circumstances. She is embarrassed of her background and as a young girl she used to pretend to be from Chile. Cati married at the age of 19, but got divorced 3 years later. As a divorcee since the age of 21, she receives a monthly income from her ex-husbands family, a small allowance to stay out of their lives. Although it helps her stay above water and she does not have to work for a living, it is not enough for her to maintain her expensive lifestyle. As a result she is always in and out of relationships with men who help her support the life she wants and who keep her in close contact with the upper class Lima society.

Carlos de la Torre as FEDERICO BARREDA RIZO-PATRÓN

Coco is THE artist. He was born into a very wealthy family. He was raised by his nannies, and his parents never really paid much attention to him, they just gave him everything he asked for: as a boy he got all the toys he wanted, as a grown man he got the apartment, the artists studio, the car… although he prefers to use the bicycle.
Despite his wealth, Coco chooses to live simple. He has chosen to turn his back on the luxurious lifestyle of his parents and dedicate it instead to the arts. It’s a way for him to release his childhood traumas of not having received any attention from his parents. Yet, over the years he has taken it to an egocentric, compulsive obsessive level, trying to hard to be an idea of something. He is the all-round artist: the musician, the poet, the dancer, etc. Coco is also complete naturalist: he only eats fruits and vegetables and wears plain natural clothing. He believes in the liberation of the ego (he is obviously completely immersed in his own ego), and always likes to be surrounded by girls or guys (anybody who admires him) His relationship are always short lived because he is addicted to attention and to the initial ecstasy of an encounter.

Melvin Quijada as DARWIN GOMEZ

Darwin is the typical Peruvian ‘all-around worker’. He does not speak very often, but quietly observes everything from the sidelines. In each chapter he holds a different job: he works as a taxi-driver, a watchman, a gardener and/or a waiter, anything he can find. Darwin comes from a slum origin and has worked full-time since the age of 10. He is always thinking about how and where to find more and better work and therefore knows a little of everything. Darwin is not married, hard-working and honest, everything he earns he spends to support his extended family of 10 brothers and sisters. He is a member of an evangelist church, which preaches strict work and moral ethics, and to which he donates a great part of his income. Darwin is the narrator of the series, the observer who doesn’t judge, the person who writes about the different characters and their superstitions on his blog: Darwin’s Blog of Superstitions.

Enrique Myers as RAFAEL TUDELA BENAVIDES

Rafael comes from a traditional Peruvian working class family, and through his own efforts at school and university, he eventually graduated from Harvard business school in the United States. He worked hard to become a manager of sales at a Peruvian mining company, and is striving for more and higher positions. Rafael is a young metro-sexual professional, he is good-looking, and works hard on his physical appearance by regularly going to the gym and surfing. Rafael is secretly gay, and although he realized it early on, he kept it to himself, knowing full well that his very conservative family would never accept him. He has had some brief relationships with men, not many, but enough to know what he wants. He is popular with the girls and although he always feels bad about doing so, he has used them more than once as a cover to appear straight. Thus, he is constantly trapped between being chased by girls and wanting to chase men.

Zorica Malesevic as ZOKI

Zoki arrived to Peru a year ago with the intent on trying to bring about some kind of social change and make people more environmental conscious. She is originally from Russia and is traveling the world to teach people about egalitarian social ideals, the environmental damages multi-national corporations are causing, the drawbacks of free-trade institutions… in general all the shortcomings of globalization. She is very outspoken and firm in her convictions, so much so, that she defends them most aggressively. Her clothing always reveals some kind of subliminal message, be it an anti-bush logo or a slogan in favor of the Coca farmers. She criticizes Limas social structure and is vocal about it. Her friends are always people she meets randomly on the street or in a bar. Zoki always tries to convince them to join her in her fight for social and environmental justice. Together she hopes to one day put together a revolutionary and/or green political party. Zoki does not work because she comes from an affluent Russian family who support her travels (they are not really aware of what she actually does) and therefore always finds enough time to philosophize about politics and the world. And she loves doing so at "Juanitos".


The Technical Team:

Direction: Mariana Tschudi
Direction of Photography: Franziska Agrawal
Art Direction: Katja Kulenkampff
Camera: Carlos Daniel Rubber
Sound: Aspasia Narvaez
Light: Sebastián Castro
Technical Assistant: Alvaro Buendía
Music: Alvaro Giraldo
Still Photography: Alejandra Devescovi and Katja Kulenkampff
Editing and Post-Production: Ademas Digital Art