It’s All Good (Está Todo Bien) review – Venezuela on the brink

Short but certainly not sweet, It’s All Good, a documentary from filmmaker Tuki Jencquel, chronicles a period between 2016 and 2017, during the ongoing healthcare crisis in Venezuela. To show us how the shortage of medicine, care, and doctors has left an entire country reeling, Jencquel hones in on a handful of people whose lives have been upended, including a young surgeon named Efraím; a couple – Rosalía and Carlos – whose pharmacy is on the brink of closure; two women, Rebeca and Mildred, diagnosed with cancer; and Francisco, an activist and smuggler who brings medicine into the country, risking his life.

What we witness in our subjects’ homes and workplaces is staggering, depressing, and ultimately horrifying. These are all people struggling against an endless tide in which no choice could ever truly count as a “win.” Rebeca is forced to beg for treatment over social media. Mildred must track down the spouses of the deceased to claim their unused medication. And then there’s the plight of surgeon Efraím, who longs to stay and help, but is paid a measly sum of just $12 a week – not enough to buy food. Over lunch, we listen in as his father – exasperated, disillusioned – explains how, years ago, a surgeon would have already bought a brand new car and an apartment. Efraím is torn: if he speaks out, he risks imprisonment, or death. And whilst leaving the country for more fruitful pastures is an option (16,000 doctors have left already, we’re told), what good does that do Venezuela?

The exact political and economical causes for a crisis of this magnitude are left mostly unexplored (though we occasionally dip and out of government buildings to witness the outrage of certain politicians). Jencquel, instead, is more interested in showing how the situation has brought its country’s ordinary citizens to the brink of despair. Between sections, we repeatedly cut to mesmerising aerial shots of Caracas, the capital, with its endless brown buildings and grey apartment blocks under a searing skyline, as though Jenquel wishes to remind us, over and over, that although we are witnessing the stories of individuals, we are in fact watching an entire nation on its knees.

In its only real stylistic flourish, It’s All Good is intercut with black-and-white sequences of its subjects coming together to act out a number of therapeutic scenarios, playing each another’s friends, family, and even their aggressors. It’s a device that seems partly inspired by Indonesian genocide doc The Act of Killing‘s own theatrical stagings, granting the film’s subjects an opportunity for expression and catharsis they will not find anywhere else. It’s in these scenes that we feel the collective anger shared between a powerless class, but also a sense of union. The exercises will not solve their problems, but their coming together grants the tiniest bit of hope in the face of overwhelming odds.

The title, It’s All Good, alludes, perhaps, to the government’s refusal to acknowledge the crisis at all. It isn’t surprising to learn that the film is yet to be screened in its native country. When the documentary ends (and it does so rather quickly at just 70 minutes), there is no optimistic coda, no attempt to draw what we’ve seen into a neat resolution. As one subject puts it, there is really only one way to survive a catastrophe like this one: don’t get sick.

★★★★☆

By: Tom Barnard

This film was screened at the Rio Cinema as part of the CASA Festival 2019, London’s Festival of Latin American Arts. For more showtimes head to our dedicated festival page.