At nightfall in one corner of Venezuela's largest and most notorious barrio, all eyes turned to the glow of a temporary movie screen set up on a hillside terrace atop stacked, red cinder block homes.
Families crawled up cramped stairwells, squeezing together on blankets and plastic chairs spread on their flat rooftops. Some leaned out of their kitchen windows, peering through tangled power lines, while others clustered at the foot of long stairways — any place to catch a view.
For a short time , hundreds of families in the neighbourhood of Petare had a front row seat for a showing of Disney's Aladdin, allowing residents to escape the stress of the coronavirus quarantine and political wrangling that darkened their TV signals among Venezuela's deepening troubles.
"We're going to make some popcorn," resident Adriana Carrillo said through the bars on her front door as her 5-year-old daughter, Aranza Sofía Guerrero, squirmed next to her. "It's a great distraction, especially for the children."
The movie projected a bright spot amid the shadow the pandemic has cast around the world at a time when Venezuelans were already struggling under years of political and social crisis. US sanctions bent on forcing President Nicolas Maduro from power recently forced DirecTV to cut its satellite signal, leaving most families in barrios like Petare with no way to watch movies.