With You, From Afar
DOCUMENTARY SHORT · 15 MIN · 2025
Synopsis
Separated from her family by the crisis in Venezuela, a young immigrant in Panama writes about her grandfather without imagining that, in losing him, she will discover how much of him still lives in her.
A grandfather who left his village and a granddaughter torn from her country. He, armed with his songs; she, with her words. Two migrants separated by time and by borders, held together by the same longing.
Victoria, a Venezuelan living in Panama, sets out to reconnect with her roots and interviews her grandfather: a farmer who left his village for Caracas in 1950 and raised his family by singing. Inspired, she writes his story and recognizes a longing they share: the need to make a life far from home. Then the 2024 elections trigger a crisis in Venezuela, he falls ill and dies. Held at a distance, Victoria understands how much of him still lives in her and, through writing, finds a voice of her own.
AWARDS
- 01Official Selection · HAVAH International Short Film Festival 2025
THE DIRECTOR
Victoria Benítez
Writer & director
I am a screenwriter in training and a self-taught writer. I was born in a village in eastern Venezuela and emigrated at twenty. I have lived in Panama ever since. For a long time I worked jobs that had nothing to do with writing, until I could not do it any more. I quit and bet on myself: I put my savings into a Master's in Creative Writing with Grupo Planeta at The Core School, in Madrid.
I currently work as script supervisor on the animated feature Toro Volandero, from the Panamanian production company ANIMAL, and I translate and subtitle films. Since then I have begun to explore film language as a way to widen my own voice.
