"My Storylof”
- Sandro Mairata
- Feb 20
- 4 min read
This film will be shown in New York City on April 23, 2026 and in Stamford on April April 25, 2026
RATING: 3.5/5 | By Sandro Mairata @smairata/ REFLEKTOR
“A promising debut that breathes new life into Peruvian commercial cinema.”
My Storylof is a surprising anomaly in Peruvian cinema and, in some ways, capable of rewriting one or two rules of our commercial cinema. Its production and release have been made possible, to a large extent, thanks to the privileges of its protagonist, screenwriter, and director, the Trujillo-based influencer and actor Benjamin Doig, who one day appeared before Cecilia Gómez de la Torre, the experienced and powerful former associate director of Tondero Distribution, to ask her, "How do you make a movie? I want to make my own!" And voilà! Here we are with a debut film in our hands—he himself recounted the anecdote at his press conference. Without any credentials or training as a film director, @benjadoes—as he is known on social media—has nevertheless produced a film with several points of interest and echoes of his exuberant, excessive personality, as well as a few lessons for professional screenwriters in our field.
This is because Peruvian audiovisual media is full of characters with inflated egos who call themselves “screenwriters” with pretensions of being mini-Tarantinos but who, in reality, produce the worst dialogue in Latin American television and cinema. Doig embraces his privileges and social position and offers us a story of love and heartbreak that comes from his turbulent, pretentious gut with total transparency, which encompasses his classism and a racism that he does not seem to be aware of because it is normalized in the environment from which he comes and which is also part of the socioeconomic sector of his fictional alter ego. I mean, Doig portrays his upper-middle class on screen without pretension. This is very different from the average Lima screenwriter hired to imagine “what it must be like” to live in an environment to which he does not belong and in which he has never moved.
“Cut your nails, you serranazo,” says the beautiful Valeria (Isabela Fernández), the object of Benjadoes' (Doig) affections, in a moment of intimacy, in the most casual and everyday way. (In Peru, the way her character says “serranazo” –meaning “coming from the highlands”– could be a very sensitive insult. Benjadoes is a teenager from Trujillo who arrives in Lima to go to university and quickly makes a group of friends with whom he shares a love of social media—a Benjadoes with the appearace of a modern-day Casanova serves as our guide to the events that have already taken place in this story. The flirtatious and mysterious Alessia (Doménica del Pozo) appears to complicate the relationship between Valeria and Benjadoes, who must decide who his true love is. That is the whole crux of My Storylof—it should be My Lofstory in any case, but that's how things are.
On paper, there is nothing new, but Jorge Constantino's excellent production—another former Tondero member now devoted to Peruvian independent cinema, such as the award-winning Raíz (Through Rocks and Clouds), which premiered in October 2024—brings us above-average audiovisual quality. Take a look at the extravagant dance scenes: here they make much more sense and are less cringe-worthy than any of those in Locos de amor: Mi primer amor.
Why does a film by an unprepared director deserve praise when Carlos Alcántara was lambasted for the same thing with his 2023 film Asu Mare: Los amigos!? For starters, Alcántara had already been accused for years of impoverishing our billboards with the most exasperating franchise in national cinema, while everything in My Storylof smells new, fresh, if not iconoclastic for the new times—smoking is harmful, but teenage characters smoking cigarettes without guilt was something that hadn't been seen in a long time. On the other hand, Bejadoes speaks to a new generation of Zs who get their information from TikTok, for whom Facebook is a thing for old people, and thanks to its cheeky script and mostly very natural performances (some of Bejadoes' “friends” are out of place), we have a good film, humble in its production and without any Chollywood influence, without a script based on bedroom antics as a pretext for exploiting voluptuous bodies—the semi-nudity here is very well done—and without resorting to stars in decline who have filled other forgettable films (Pablito Ruiz, to give one example).
My Storylof is not an entirely complete film. It is, however, a very promising film debut, one of those that makes you think, “This is it...”, which could perhaps breathe new life into Peruvian commercial cinema. Of the three main characters, the most interesting is Alessia, played well by Del Pozo. Fernández isn't bad, but Doig confuses effort and grimaces with acting; someone should tell him that Jim Carrey isn't... Carrey knows well that every grimace must say something, and isn't used to hide when a scene hasn't been well composed. In the end, when Doig fully embraces his role as screenwriter and director, he could move away from the young adult story format of The Fault in Our Stars or other young adult books like those by the Spaniard author Blue Jeans—a format to which this film owes so much—to do something more risky and mature. The talent is there. Now he needs to go for more.
Year of Release: | 2025 |
Director | |
Producer | Sergio Delgado Leon |
Cast | |
IMDB |
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