An Acquaintance of Interest was born out of the combination of two elements: 1. A love/hate relationship of Latin American politics. Complete with its extremes, and rationale-defying histories. 2. An absolute love for portrayals of political intrigue and espionage in both fiction and non-fiction media. For me, An Acquaintance of Interest serves as a form of release from political impotence. An impotence that fills me in equal terms with anger and hope; anger at the current state of the region, and the unfortunate cast of characters that either by total ignorance, or facetious compliance, promote and perpetuate the worst idiosyncrasies of the Latin American political mindset. And a hope that one day we can overcome these idiosyncrasies, and that we can see past the Cold War-era narratives that still dictate (or rather, are maliciously used to manipulate) the collective subconscious. An Acquaintance of Interest represents freedom from years of internal tension between unbridled political idealism, and acid cynicism: two emotions that perfectly describe my relationship with Latin American politics, and two emotions portrayed by the characters of Lucas and Rodrigo in the film. 2 The narrative of the film was created with these emotions in mind, and mixed with specific sensibilities and forms of the much-beloved espionage and political intrigue genres. Said genres have been vital in my formation as a filmmaker, especially that of the espionage film, which I consider one of the purest forms of cinema, due to the endless possibilities of deception and narrative heft that can be carried out through visual language and dialogue in film. In An Acquaintance of Interest, there are traces of Ian Fleming’s Bond escapism, as well as the complexities and linguistic nuances of John LeCarré. Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana provides the basic plot through-line, as well as some of the small, specific moments of humour in the film. The results never veer to the campy, adventurous form of a Bond film, but they also do not cross the ...