Vince Banderos Loren Castingavi Page

Castingavi, who has been vocal about admiring Banderos’s work, puts it more bluntly: “Most actors show you the wound. Vince shows you the scar and makes you imagine the knife.”

As Banderos puts it, standing up to leave the cafe: “Loren once told me that a film is just a series of doors. You don’t need to show what’s behind every door. You just need to show the hand on the knob.” Vince Banderos Loren Castingavi

A graduate of the Czech film school FAMU, Castingavi (pronounced Cas-teen-GAH-vee ) treats the camera like a scalpel. Her 2023 debut, A House for a Sparrow , was a masterclass in negative space. The plot—an elderly librarian evicting her hoarding son—was simple. The execution was not. Castingavi shot every interior scene from the height of a seated librarian, forcing the audience to crane their necks upward at the son’s chaos, literally looking up at dysfunction. Castingavi, who has been vocal about admiring Banderos’s

“I hate coverage,” Castingavi admits with a dry laugh during a Zoom interview from her Prague studio. “Coverage is the death of intent. If you have ten cameras, you have ten opinions. I have one camera and one very specific lie to tell.” You just need to show the hand on the knob

That hand is trembling. And we cannot wait to see it turn. Eleanor Hayes covers independent cinema and international film festivals for Reel South Magazine.