In association with Mediterranean Cinema, we bring you a real treat from Paraguay. The Heiresses, the debut film by the acclaimed director Marcelo Martinessi, has won as many as four awards at this year’s Berlinale, including two Silver Bears. This is one of the rare Latin American LGBT films, and, even more unusually, it focuses on an elderly lesbian couple who, after 30 years of luxurious lifestyle thanks to inherited wealth, fall on hard times and start to sell out their belongings.

When Chiquita ends up in prison over a banking debt, Chela starts to earn for a living by driving rich women to hospitals and card playing session in her old car. The plot thickens when she develops closeness with a client’s daughter and Chiquita comes back from prison. After meeting a much younger Angie with whom she creates a fresh and invigorating new relationship, Chela breaks her mould and begins her personal, intimate revolution.

This subtly told tale against the backdrop of the Paraguayan economic crisis, financial security and painful changes in society has garnered outstanding reviews, especially for directing and script, both by Martinessi, and for the amazing cast Ana Brun and Margarita Irún. The film screened at the Mediterranean Film Festival in Split, in this year’s special selection of films from South America – The Other Side of the Mediterranean – pointing to similarities between the Mediterranean and South America in terms of mentality, culture, food and religiosity.

The Heiresses are scheduled for Sunday, 18 November at 7.30pm, Tuškanac cinema.