Photo : Réal : Virginia Flores Stills : Cimafilm Affiche : Ignasi Monrea
Viva México Festival - Screening of "Mi Benjamín"
Witness the graceful transition of a principal dancer in this moving documentary that captures the delicate end of an iconic stage life. It is a must-see for film buffs who appreciate raw human stories, featuring a special post-screening conversation with the director and her collaborators.
Cinéma Luminor Hôtel de Ville (Paris 4th)
About
The screening with French subtitles will be followed by a Q&A session with the director, dancer Benjamin Pech, and producer Marion d'Ornano!
Mi Benjamín
Victoria Clay Mendoza
Documentary | 1h15
Synopsis:
Victoria Clay Mendoza follows Benjamin Pech during his final year as an étoile dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet. A friendship develops between them in which they see themselves in each other: she faces the need to return to Mexico to care for her mother suffering from Alzheimer's disease, while he confronts a hip injury that ends his stage career. A visual essay on the loving acceptance of things coming to an end.
Victoria Clay Mendoza
Victoria Clay Mendoza is a Mexican director. She studied philosophy and trained at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU). Victoria has dedicated most of her directing career to filming different figures from the art world. She began with the film Maletilla (2003), in which she follows three young bullfighter apprentices and documents their journey to becoming matadors. She later directed a film about Sophie Calle and her artistic process, Untitled (2012) — presented at FICM Morelia, IFCALI, and FIFF ARTIS — which won the Best Film award at the Films on Art Festival in Portugal and was also screened at the Centre Pompidou in 2024 as part of a retrospective on the artist.
More recently, Victoria worked as a cinematographer on the last two documentaries by Barbet Schroeder: The Venerable W (Cannes Film Festival 2017) and Ricardo and Painting (Locarno International Film Festival 2023).
