©Courtesy of Tribeca Festival

Time stands still in Bolivia’s La Paz. Every day, thousands of shoeshine boys swarm to the highest altitude capital in the world to find customers. Wearing thick balaclavas and baseball caps pulled down low to hide their faces, the lustrabotas come to work in one of the most undesirable professions facing discrimination daily.

In this unique city surrounded by vigorous mountains, where the air is thin and things haven’t changed for decades, shoe shining is alive and kicking. One of these shoeshine boys is the protagonist of Vinko Tomičić Salinas’s solo feature debut The Dog Thief that is having its world premiere at Tribeca Festival in the international narrative competition and was picked up for international release by LuxBox. This impressive film will take your breath away.

In the very first scene we meet the boy in question. His name is Martin (wonderfully played with sensibility by newcomer Franklin Aro), a 13-year-old boy living in La Paz. In an intense close-up, after a long silence hearing classmates giggling in front of him, he stumbles to read words from a book – “a black bird greets me, immortal paradises may flourish”.

He has a blue pen in his mouth. The camera moves backwards, his eyes look frightened, the school uniform’s tie is tight, his face long. Martin is a mild-mannered rather innocent orphan – his mom died when he was a small kid, and his father is not even mentioned. He lives in the house of a wealthy elderly woman, who is taken care of by good-hearted Mrs. Gladys (María Luque), who was a friend of Martin’s late mother. Mrs. Gladys has taken him under her wings. They are both members of the indigenous community.

©Courtesy of Tribeca Festival

Martin has fallen behind in school (he is in eight grade) where he is bullied by his classmates, and when time allows, he works at the square as a shoeshine boy. One day Mr. Novoa, a lonely older tailor, played by the extraordinary Alfredo Castro (Chilean veteran from Pablo Larraín’s many films such as Tony Manero, 2008 and El Conde, 2023), whose only friend is a prize-winning German Shepard named Astor, comes to Martin to polishes his shoes. Martin decides rather fast to steal his dog hoping for a reward – it’s almost like he has to steal just because a shoeshine boy in La Paz has the reputation of being a thief and is shunned from the society.

But Martin didn’t expect to find love in the dog and to form a strong bond with Mr. Novoa, who lets Martin put out posters around the city offering a reward for the missing dog. Martin also starts to work in the tailor store where he learns the trade. They slowly become good friends, and both seem to benefit from the relationship, which fills an empty void in both of their lives.

The underlying tension throughout the film lies in whether the dog theft will be revealed or not. Martin’s plan becomes harder and harder. We come to understand that Martin is not a bad kid, he just wants to be noticed, believing that Mr. Novoa is his real father – he has few chances of getting adopted because he is too old. It’s with a touching grip that talented Chilean writer-director Vinko Tomičić Salinas, who previously co-directed El Fumigador (2016) and whom we hopefully will hear much more from, balances with ease, beauty and skill.

His tight script feels grounded in authenticity and evolved by spending a lot of time with the actor Franklin Aro in La Paz. The theme of bullying, which is captured in the opening shot and continues throughout the film, came from spending that time together. He saw how Aro was discriminated against in life and thrown out of the pool hall because he was dressed as a shoeshine boy.

The theme of injustice, racism and class differences is pinned down in the dynamic of their relationship and how Martins makes his decisions. The relationship tells a micro story about something bigger. In the 1980s, shoeshining became common for many indigenous people who migrated to the city in search of making a small living.

©Courtesy of Tribeca Festival

Martin has polished the shoes of the elite for a while now – he wants to buy a trumpet and starts playing in a band, which positively surprises Mr. Novoa, who is a fan of classic music. Music, and sound, similarly plays a crucial role in the film. The original score from composer Wissam Hojeij is soothing and coexists with the scenes seamlessly. The reference of trumpet is used as jazzy sound design by Federico Moreira, elevating the mesmerizing mood of the city and seems to echo part of Martin’s inner life. Martin and the city feel inseparable.

The city of La Paz (means peace in Spanish), plays a principal role in the film, beautifully captured by cinematographer Sergio Armstrong (he shot Julio Jorquera Arriagadas My Last Round, 2011, and most Pablo Larraín’s Chilean films from Tony Manero to Neruda, 2016).

Wherever we follow our characters, the camera creates soulfulness from the cobblestone roads, houses on hills, a church interior, shady light night streets, graffiti on walls, red seats in a theater, an endless cemetery, old buildings and an airborne cable car. The camera is in love with its colorful secrets. This city with its inhabitants is an unavoidable destination. As if it splashes out from the screen up to higher ground.