Experiencing Interruptions?

Violeta at last

Recently divorced, 72-year-old Violeta lives alone in her childhood house, tending to her lush tropical garden and making plans to turn her property into a boarding house. When she discovers the bank is about to take away her house, she breaks all the rules to hold onto her home and her freedom.

  • HILDA HIDALGO-XIRINACHS
    Director
    Of love and other demons, Two Homelands
  • HILDA HIDALGO-XIRINACHS
    Writer
    Of love and other demons, Two Homelands
  • LAURA IMPERIALE
    Producer
    La perdición de los hombres, Así es la vida, Del amor y otros demonios
  • EUGENIA CHAVERRI
    Key Cast
    "Violeta"
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Violeta al fin
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 21 minutes 27 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    December 31, 2017
  • Country of Origin:
    Costa Rica
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - HILDA HIDALGO-XIRINACHS

Costa Rican film director, scriptwriter and producer.

Her most recent film is the documentary Two Homelands (Dos Patrias), about political prisoners in Cuba, released in Costa Rican theaters in december 2023.

She founded Producciones La Tiorba in 2003, which produced the narrative feature films Del Amor y Otros Demonios (Of love and other demons, 2010), based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez and Violeta al fin (Violet at last, 2017) about a 72-year-old woman willing to break all the rules to hold onto her home and her freedom.

Her filmography includes short films and documentaries on Human Rights, Women Rights, sustainable development and art shot at Costa Rica, Cuba, Bhutan, Benin, Italy, France, the Netherlands and United States.

She also directed the Nueva Escuela de Cine y Televisión (New School of Film and Tv) at Universidad Veritas (Veritas University), the first film graduate degree in Central America.

She works as Academic Coordinator of the Lab ICAM (Interaction and Audiovisual Communication Lab) and teach directing, acting and scriptwriting at the Escuela de Ciencias de la Comunicación Colectiva (Social Communications School) at Universidad de Costa Rica (University of Costa Rica).

In 2020, she cofounded Costa Rican Women Director’s Union and became and member of CIMA, the Spanish Female Filmmakers Association; from which she actively promotes women's equality in the film industry.

https://vimeo.com/hildahidalgo
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2958840/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

hildahidalgo@yahoo.com
+506 83997592

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Director Statement

The mid-afternoon sun brightens up the entrance hall of an abandoned train station. At the foot of an art deco staircase there is a woman leaning on the banister. She is about 65 years old, maybe more. Her figure breaks the symmetry of the frame.

It is a picture of my mom, and it was the first image for the character of Violeta. When I took it, I had a huge desire to make a film about that woman. Not necessarily my mom, but the woman on the stairs. She is a woman trapped in a conventional life, I thought, and she is going to break free. That was 25 years ago.

I am attracted to the notion that old age frees us. How does it feel to age? What do we fear? Do we regret what we have done or what we did not do? What would we dare to do when we know we are old? I am convinced that aging is very different from what we have been led to believe.

It infuriates me that old age is solely defined as a stage of decadence; as a destination to avoid. There is an insistence that older people are useless, forgetful, dispassionate, plus an endless extension of fearful adjectives. As if by becoming old you cease to be a person. When precisely you are more a person than ever.
Although old age implies a deterioration of our physical capacities, it also allows a distillation of who we are. Feelings and ideas, desires and intuition are brighter. Spirituality is enhanced. And it is possible that getting older is the best thing that is going to happen to us in life.

Violeta at 72, gets divorced and lives alone for the first time in her life. She wants to start her own business at home, goes to mass, tends to her garden every day, talks to her deceased parents and enjoys her family to the fullest. Faced with the threat of the bank foreclosing her home, she discovers what she is capable of doing to defend her home and her autonomy.

It is a story that is more familiar than we would have wanted in a century that put us in direct contact with harsh tales of bank foreclosures and evictions.

The character of Violeta is inspired by my mother and my aunts, Costa Rican women born in the twentieth century who lived all the limitations of the traditional roles imposed on women and who somehow managed to rebel against them at the turn of the century. With her final action, Violeta defies the system, everyone around her and even herself.