Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 40th Guadalajara International Film Festival, Abraham Escobedo-Salas’ En el fin del Mundo (At the End of the World) is a stark, deeply moving portrait of a life pushed to the edges. Set in the crumbling peripheries of Lisbon, the film follows Cecilio, a crack addict, drug dealer, and Cape Verdean immigrant who has lived in Portugal for almost 40 years, and yet still feels like a foreigner in a city he never truly belonged to.
Shot with an unflinching eye, but never without care, this nearly 70-minute documentary brings us into Cecilio’s world of ruins: an abandoned factory-turned-shelter, a body weathered by time and substance, a voice longing for connection. Despite his efforts—looking for work, reaching out to family, battling addiction—the system’s indifference renders him invisible. It’s a universe that recalls the spectral Lisbon of Pedro Costa, where ghosts and men coexist, trapped between staying and leaving.
En el fin del Mundo marks Escobedo-Salas’s second feature after Breaking la Vida (2022), a vibrant coming-of-age documentary that followed six young friends in Mexico united by their love of hip-hop and the challenges of growing into adulthood. While Breaking la Vida was rooted in rhythm, youth, and movement, his latest work is slower, heavier, and more contemplative. Yet both films share a deep compassion for those navigating life on society’s fringes. The shift in tone reveals a director unafraid to change register, while remaining anchored in human experience.
Escobedo-Salas explained that his initial impulse was to explore “the world of drugs from the perspective of a user who also operated as a small-time dealer.” He recalls thinking, “Here I can do it safely,” acknowledging that the space Cecilio inhabits allowed him to be present without putting himself at risk. But the film’s power lies not only in its access—there is also power in its trust. Escobedo-Salas built a relationship of mutual respect with Cecilio and others who appear on camera, forging camaraderie through a non-invasive approach and a shared understanding. “As long as they are not named, or given the spotlight as citizens, residents, or granted any kind of light,” he insists, “the abuses will continue to occur. That’s the message.”
Stylistically, the film resists conventional narrative arcs. There’s no redemption offered, no neat closure. Instead, we are left with fragments—of memory, of place, of identity. The film allows time to stretch and sag. In doing so, it creates space for contemplation. Every silence, every prolonged gaze becomes an ethical act of attention. The viewer is asked not only to witness Cecilio’s life but to inhabit it moment by moment.
En el fin del Mundo is more than a tale of poverty or drug use. What Escobedo-Salas reveals is the endurance of beauty and dignity in the most desolate of places. A flicker of sunlight through broken windows, the curve of cigarette smoke in an otherwise still room, the tenderness of Cecilio feeding stray animals: these gestures, small and fleeting, speak of a life still insisting on meaning.
At the heart of the film lies the body—worn, scarred, but undeniably present. Escobedo-Salas, like Costa before him, positions the body not only as a site of suffering but as a vessel for memory, history, and the possibility of transformation. Cecilio’s voice, at times resolute, at times weary, draws us into a liminal space where time moves unevenly and belonging is always just out of reach.
That the film received the FIPRESCI Prize at Guadalajara’s 40th edition is telling—the prize recognizes a filmmaker who doesn’t flinch in the face of discomfort, and of a cinema that, even in the darkest corners, finds light. En el fin del Mundo is a slow, meditative descent into a world society would rather forget, but also a quiet rebellion against erasure. It reminds us that to exist, to resist, and to be seen, are all forms of survival.
By Müge Turan
Edited by José Teodoro
@FIPRESCI 2025