Toro (Paul Wollin) is actually Piotr and he fled from Poland to Germany 10 years ago. He tells a Benoit (Kelvin Burkard), a boy who appears in the remote warehouse where Toro regularly goes to box, that he was rumored to be a “ciota” in his village, a “homosexual.” He then ignores Benoit when he asks him whether he is one. He makes good money working as an escort, offering his services to bourgeois women in hotels and apartments. He works hard and persistently to get his independence and dreams of returning to Poland to open a boxing school there. Toro has a clear goal and is determined. He gives his disillusioned and depressed friend Victor (Miguel Dagger), a drug addicted hustler, new work all the time and even begrudgingly gives him money when his sister Emilia (Leni Speidel) suddenly shows up. He wants to take Victor with him when he goes back but Toro’s future plans are brutally shattered because his friend has to pay up on his debts. Like a bull trapped in a corner, he has just one way of reacting and it has catastrophic results for him and others. Peruvian director Martin Hawie has made a noteworthy graduate film that has a laconic and rough black & white look. His rejected and lost protagonists battle with their masculine role models, migration issues, and religious convention in the tradition of the lonely characters found in Martin Scorsese’s New Hollywood films.

Jens Mayer

Translation: Elinor Lewy