Trailer For Omar Rodriguez Lopez’s ‘The Sentimental Engine Slayer’.

Found this one over at QuietEarth and it looks to be a genuinely awesome film debut from Omar Rodriguez Lopez of Mars Volta fame. The musician turned filmmaker has written, directed, produced, and composed music for this labor of love and has finally cranked out a trailer that looks all too enticing. The mood is great, and if the cinematography on display in the trailer is any indication of the rest of the movie, then we are in for a real treat. Premiering this month at the Internation Film Festival Rotterdam, The Sentimental Engine Slayer looks like a damn promising start to what could be an awesomely successful film career for Lopez. Check out the synopsis below and the trailer at the bottom of the post.

Via QuietEarth: The Sentimental Engine Slayer tells the compelling, confounding tale of the overdue coming of age of a twenty-something misfit named Barlam. Barlam’s awkward transition from boy to man is as much the story of struggling to find one’s essence in a world of stereotypes as it is an indictment of the distorted reality of family life in the disengaged 21st century. A bottom-rung grocery bagger whose neo-incestuous relationship with his addict sister, Natalia, causes him no small amount of grief and disillusionment, Barlam seeks solace in the convoluted wisdom of what few male peers are available, namely his androgynous, alcoholic boss, Oscar, and the sister’s simple-minded boyfriend, Zack. Seeking an explanation as to the strange circumstances of his apparent lack of family structure, as well as the respect from others fundamentally absent in his mundane model-building existence, Barlam is soon led astray amid a seedy underworld of prostitutes, hustlers and addicts. The labyrinthine plot soon begs questioning as to where reality ends and fantasy begins, Barlam shifting effortlessly between hapless punching bag, assertive surrogate father figure, and rage-prone psychopath.

- William Gutheil