WATCH THE TRAILER FOR THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE

A mysterious power failure in a small mountain town coincides with the disappearance of one of its most eccentric young residents. Mystery piles upon mystery as his family and friends search for him, fail, and ultimately try to forget about him – an undertaking that results in many unexpected, and in some cases bizarre, effects on the town’s already peculiar community.

The focus of attention is a ten-year-old boy named Turkeylegs. Left to fend for himself for the summer, Turkeylegs searches for his lost friend Donald, while the friend’s father, pregnant girlfriend and uncle spend their time wasting away at the local roller rink, dirt track and empty streets of town.

As the summer gets drier, Turkeylegs is thrown into bouts of confusion as he watches Donald’s girlfriend fall in love with a boy named Stool, his father become more interested in finding his lost vehicle, and the local townsfolk take the whole situation as a joke.

In a finale that pits the characters between visions of heaven and hell, the father lights off fireworks and the locals celebrate the girlfriend’s winning track competition. Turkeylegs is left to wonder whether or not his disappearance would have the same effects, or if his small amount of hope is enough to keep his old friend from turning out like those before him.

 
Set in an unspecified time and in an unspecified place, THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE could take place anywhere at any point in history. Writer/Director Todd Rohal spent over two years creating the characters and situations by writing and rewriting over a hundred short-short stories. The stories soon developed into a cohesive narrative and were then honed into a structural form.

The process of making the film will allow the actors (both professional and non-professional) to bring their own lives and ideas to the set. Through a series of planned discussions and workshop sessions, the film will be fine-tuned to fit each of the actors and their surroundings, and will create a film that sets itself apart from most other traditional narratives.

While staying true to the original script, many lines of dialogue and actions will be expanded upon to reflect actual events or traits from each of the actor’s lives and abilities. A sort of pseudo-reality will come to life from inside the sometimes bizarre and cartoonish characters that populate the film.

The film’s visual style will incorporate a naturalistic lighting scheme: light filtering through curtained windows, sunsets and sunrises, unusual lighting sources such as bug zappers and Ferris wheels. Shot in a wide screen anamorphic (Cinemascope) format, THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE will resemble the wide-open spaces of a western, or the empty canvas of a comic strip. The pace of the film, sometimes frantic, and other times slow and deliberate, will shift with the moods and actions of the characters. The camera will take as many unexpected turns as the script does (sometimes flipping around or turning to look at scenes at an angle) as the characters try to determine what’s not right in their strange world.

With such a varied collection of characters, the pace of THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE doesn’t let up. From the first frames of the film, -- where a family performs a musical act to a crowd of screaming fans -- to the closing scene filled with fireworks and demolition derby cars, the film takes you on a wild ride of sights and sounds that will affect each viewer in different ways.