Discoveries from Ecuador World Cinema

The film tells the story of Ariel, a 21-year-old who decides to form a rock band to compete for a prize of ten thousand dollars in a musical band contest, this as a last option when trying to get money to save their relationship and reunite with his ex-girlfriend, which breaks due to the trip she must make to Finland for an internship. Ariel with her friend Ortega, decides to make a casting to find the other members of the band, although they do not know nothing about music, thus forming a band with members that have diverse and opposite personalities.

A father is without the means to pay for his daughter's medical treatment. As a last resort, he partners with a greedy co-worker to rob a casino. When things go awry they're forced to hijack a city bus.

A Missionary converting an Indigenous Community in a remote Ecuadorian volcano must come to terms with her own Faith when her son is possessed by dark forces older than her own religion.

Dalia, the daughter of a famous writer who has recently died, inherits the legacy of finishing his book. To do this, Dalia will become part of the book and will come face to face with the characters who have taken the theme of the book in order to be the protagonists.

Viejos Malditos is a sharp drama with a touch of dark humor that introduces us to Elías, a recently widowed, gruff, and ill-tempered old man who thought life couldn’t get any worse... until the cat arrived. Sick, exhausted, and stuck in his worst streak, Elías must not only cope with his inevitable decline but also with a scruffy, noisy feline that has decided to turn his nights—and those of the entire neighborhood—into a hellish concert of meows.

An unfinished film is passed along from one friend to another. The dialog between them is a journey crossed by the swarming of the Great Eastern Brood X of periodical cicadas that prophetically emerge every 17 years in the United States, invoking a reflection of a post-pandemic present and our shared futures. A road movie composed of a chorus of voices (both human and non-human), the warnings of history, the power of nature and rebirth.

Azucena, a woman in her thirties, approaches Julio, a teenage boy living in a group home, for reasons he doesn’t understand. As they spend time together, an uneasy closeness grows, changing the shape of a bond neither expected to find.

Jordi a young man working at a bank has an overriding aim in life and that is to hide his humble origins. But he meets Greta a Colombian girl who has come to Ecuador to make a living.....

A drama set in turbulent, turn-of-the-millennium Ecuador and centered on a young man who begins to develop complicated feelings for Juano after he saves him from a beating.

Helena is 17 years old and studies in Finland. Her father, a Swede, and her mother, indigenous Kichwa of Sarayaku, live at the heart of the Amazon in Ecuador.

Six Latinos traveling to the United States for different reasons soon find themselves immersed in the most ridiculous and embarrassing situations. From an inexperienced boy traveling as an exchange student to a naive actress trying to make it in Hollywood, each of them will experience unexpected adventures that will make them question whether leaving their country was the best decision.

When Luisa, 45, returns from a psychiatric clinic after a bout with severe postpartum depression, she enters a new confinement in her dazzling home, surrounded by family members and a brigade of servants who expect her struggles to remain invisible. Unable to continue playing the role of the perfect housewife, Luisa's only escape is to waltz elegantly into madness.

Pipe is invited to join his mysterious father on a quest for the lost Inca gold. But as they journey deeper into the jungle, he understands that they cannot escape the family demons that are traveling with them.

A bus called Sueños (Dreams) links three modern-day tales set in exotic Ecuador - the equator-straddling country that calls itself "The Middle of the World." Each of these stories carries a woman's name, and each features a mysterious, alluring female outsider who bewitches men. In the first tale, a blonde woman with an unclear past arrives in a remote, male-deprived Andean town and offers piano lessons, only to become the focus of wild rumors and innuendo. In the second, a married college professor who is haunted by nightmares becomes obsessed with a beguiling woman who seems to be sending him an ominous message. In the final story, a couple vacationing at a jungle resort refuse to believe in the ancient myths of Ecuador, but are forced to confront the legendary Guasangó.

A short documentary film that explains why ancestral languages are dying and promotes their preservation.

Julia, a teenager from Latin America, has lived in the U.S. most of her life. She is popular, a successful Youtuber and wants to become prom queen. Everything changes abruptly when her family has to return to Ecuador. What will she have to face? Getting used to a new culture and a catholic high school will not be easy. The "gringa" becomes the target of "La Reinas", three popular bullies who rule the school. Julia is now a misfit who will have to earn her new friends' affection in order to survive.

Starting her senior year in high school, Sara doesn't have many friends and is caught between an overbearing mother, and a more understanding father. With uneasiness at school and tension in the household, Sara escapes to smoke in a little alley alone – that is – until Andrea, a new classmate, arrives. A close friendship develops to all that can see, but behind closed doors, an intimate relationship unfolds, which, when discovered, throws everything into disarray.

About Niño, an orphanage boy in the port city of Guayaquil in Ecuador.

No Autumn, No Spring depicts modern day Guayaquil City and its invisible generation. Iván Mora Manzano’s punk ballad of rebellion, confrontation and the disenfranchised reveals the tribulations of young men and women who struggle deeply with the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Is the year 2023. Quito has been walled by Leonardo Ponce, a military dictator that took control of the city in the early 2010's. A group of revolutionaries led by Marcos and Santiago are on the verge of giving a coup d'état. Just hours before the strike, Santiago steps forward and starts asking tough questions that led everybody to rethink why are they really doing this. Meanwhile at Ponce's palace, he is trying to decipher what is going on at the city wall. There's unusual movement and one of the revolutionaries is captured. Ponce tries to get as much information as he can from him. Confined to just 2 locations, Quito 2023 shows the human side of the revolution, the internal conflicts of their leaders and the hopelessness of a region that cannot be governed.

At the end of the 19th century, a boy appears in an Andean village. Nicanor, the village priest, discovers that the child’s blood causes the crops to bear fruit magically, but for the boy to live, he must be fed human blood.

Vicky is fisherman by day and bar owner at night. When she was a little boy her dream was to be a radio soap opera star, nowadays she dreams of falling in love again. How is it possible that a small, barren place in the third world has managed to achieve this special form of freedom and tolerance?

Jimena is a hungry girl who wanders through the mountains in search of food and comes across the carrot garden of an old indigenous farmer. She steals the last carrot from the garden and is caught and imprisoned by the old man. She tries to escape by any means necessary, even at the cost of other's well being.

The movie follows four women of different generations and their struggle in the cold world of modeling.

Young Neisi Dajomes and her siblings train in a small and simple weightlifting gym located in a quiet and humble town in Ecuador. They see in this sport a way of life and the great incentive to improve themselves day by day, to fulfill their Olympic dreams.

Mexican-Ecuadorian film from 1964, originally titled: ‘The Misadventures of Don Ventura’. A musical comedy created in the style of traditional classic Hollywood cinema of the 1950s, with the purpose of promoting Ecuador to the world through an idyllic vision of the country that erased economic, political and social conflicts, while offering its national and international viewers the idea of a harmonious nation in the process of modernization.

Legend tells of a girl named Palmira. A teenager, becoming a beautiful woman, her normal small town life took an unexpected turn. A demon expelled from paradise falls in love with her, causing great misfortune; only one can defeat him.

November 7th, 2001. After a seventy years absence, the Ecuadorian national soccer team is close to qualifying for the first time to a Soccer World Cup. This documentary follows the events that took place during that historic date, when a whole country lived under the shadow of a soccer game.

José Manuel Ortiz, 32, has had a great interest and sensitivity towards music since he was very young. He grows up listening to the anecdotes of his great-grandfather Carlos Amable Ortiz who was the first academic musician in Ecuador. After the death of Carlos Amable Ortiz, his fame begins to fade, but his 237 scores have managed to survive time. Upon recovering the works, José Manuel's interest in studying and deepening the music found is awakened.

A deaf teenager submitted to a cochlear implant surgery must be face his fear of speaking to approach a young girl that he has fallen in love at first sight.

LEI and WONG clandestinely arrive to Ecuador, on their way to the port city of Guayaquil. From here LEI plans to continue her journey to New York, but CHANG, a bipolar mobster will decide her fate. WONG unwillingly gets entangled in the web of corruption that operates the encroachment of Chinese immigrants. His only objective is to bring his twelve-year-old son from China.

Julia, a thirty-year-old newly separated and in search of a life change, finds two new friends. The three begin to live an intense friendship that turns into a love triangle in which their frustrations and fears of not knowing if they will manage to be who they dreamed to be when they were younger.

On January 3, 2001 in Lorca there was a traffic accident that caused 12 deaths who were Ecuadorians, worked in agricultural fields and were in an irregular situation in Spain. This documentary reflects the harsh reality experienced by dozens of illegal Ecuadorians offering much cheaper labor in Spain.

Cuviví is the Ecuadorean indigenous name for the upland sandpiper, a wading bird that has special significance for the communities living around the Ozogoche lakes in the middle of the Andes. Each year, these birds migrate south from North America. Around September they pass the Ozogoche lakes, where large numbers then “commit suicide,” plunging from great heights into the ice-cold water. A girl lives near the lake. Her uncle lives in the US, and she might be heading there herself. In the meantime, she awaits the arrival of the cuvivís, few of which have appeared in recent years. The lakes are drying up.

A cynical college student and an optimistic tourist, stranded on a bus by a national strike, form an unlikely bond as they decide to hitchhike together to reach their individual destinations, discovering shared lessons and unexpected friendship along the way.

Based on a real-life case, The Wanabis tells the story of a group of friends who, in an attempt to become overnight millionaires, invest everything they have (and don't have) in a bizarre business proposition that convert dyed black bills into real money. Their quest takes them on a journey fraught with risk and absurdity, risking their lives or at least changing them forever.

When a new priest arrives in a small Andean village, the lives of its inhabitants begin to change.

Pablo feels trapped in this rainy village. He wants to leave, now. And this time all means are good.

Leo (27) returns to Las Maravillas, his mining town in southern Ecuador, because Tiberio (60s), his macho father, is dying. Returning reunites him with Ricardo (27), a miner who was his first love and also confronts his true identity with his father. As he navigates the reunion and the farewell, Clarita (45), a trans woman and Shaman, will teach him that we are more than what we can see.

A two and half month journey from Buenos Aires (Argentina) to Medellin (Colombia), through some of the most amazing places in South America, immersed in the Backpacker's culture.

María and Isabel are two women in their fifties who, like many others, recycle in Quito, where there is no recycling system. María leads a collective fight for basic labor rights; while Isabel transmits her knowledge of environmental care while she raises her daughters.

Is there an audience for Latin American movies? These are some of the questions posed by an Ecuadorian filmmaker whose latest movie was a commercial flop. He embarks on a query to find answers to his questions and relief for his despair. His research leads him to a giant contraband market in the port city of Guayaquil, where pirated movies from all over the world are sold for one dollar each. Here, he discovers a number of Ecuadorian low budget movies produced by amateurs, with titles he had never heard of before: from action packed productions to evangelical melodramas.

A musical illustration of nomadism, change, and human adaptation.

With intertwined life stories, this film starts from the questions: Is Ecuadorian society essentially mestizo? What is a mongrel? This documentary aims to bring to the fore issues that have been poorly resolved both in the way in which Ecuador defines itself as a country, and in the subjectivity of its inhabitants.

A droplet of water is born from the cloud and descends to Earth, where it does not find a home and faces its tragic destiny. Will someone be able to change the fate of the droplet of water?

While her father is away, a girl hears strange noises from her sick mother’s room. As nature and humans suffer from foreign waste, she longs to see her mother—but is she ready for what’s behind the door?

Julian's wife takes their son, leaving him depressed and unstable. He tries to get his son back but his distorted view of the reality may make him an antagonist to the superhero he thinks he is for his child.

A mother and her son use the same video tapes to record themselves in parallel timelines, overlapping different impressions of the world. Images from the 1990s reveal to us a world still failing to solve the same old problems.

In the process of creating a collective documentary with an intimate and artisanal gaze, Afro-descendant and Indigenous youth of the Chocó Rainforest in Esmeraldas, become inspired by their elders’ life stories and ongoing defense of territory and denounce a common experience of marginalization and contamination of their rivers.

Jonathan and Romario are two Afro-Ecuadorian children from the Chota Valley, one of the poorest regions of Ecuador. Their fate can be one of two: to become world-class footballers like Ulises de la Cruz, Chucho Benitez and Antonio Valencia, or farmers like Darwin. This documentary reveals the lack of opportunities, discrimination, and economic and social segregation that black communities face in Ecuador.

It tells the story of a girl's journey to meet the spirit of her deceased mother. Kuychi Pucha is a passage between life and death through a rainbow, a ritual of life and death.

Amparo embarks on a trip under the spell of a shaman from the Andes, in search of vengeance from the men who kidnapped her little sister and murdered her mother.

The elders of the Kichwa community of Sarayaku preserve the history of their land for the youngest. They save the knowledge of their traditions against modernity and the invasion of their territory.

Two women are torn between the past, with its traditions and apparent security, and the future full of uncertainty.

In the rich hill of Potosí in Bolivia there is a silver mine that was the largest in the world. It has been exploited since 1546 with the arrival of the Spanish who enslaved the indigenous people to steal the precious metal. To this day, hundreds of meters underground, the indigenous miners continue to exploit the mine in extremely precarious conditions, Martín Cádiz is one of them; hi works in the depths of the hill and desires that his children do not enter these tunnels of hell.

Iris and Ariel are 17-year-old twins, who live with their mother and older sister in an old house in the middle of a rocky island covered with molluscs and birds. The teenagers have grown up isolated from the mainland, in a sibling relationship that surpasses the limits of normal intimacy. The abrupt absence of their mother deeply wounds the three siblings, and Iris, moved by a strong need of separating herself from her brother, decides to go alone to the city for the first time.

In an unknown first world airport the arrival of an ecuadorian flight is heard. The 'members of the European Union' passby migration, while the 'others', in the other line, wait. In the middle of the claims, a group of ecuadorians is arrested. They are taken to the Room, where they wait to be deported. Seems like everyone hides something, like PROMETEO the young magician with his hands tied like a delinquent who has a 'magical' trunk as luggage. Time passes, a way of being, Ecuador happens in this waiting room. Seems like there is no possible exit. Meanwhile, a different but well-known way of life takes place. The only thing left as a promising way out is illusion.

Soledad is trapped in quarantine with a new partner she has recently been dating. The objects of his old relationship still flood his house and denounce a presence that has not disappeared. One night, the memory of the ex-boyfriend materializes in Soledad's bed and the three of them wake up in a bizarre and uncomfortable situation. From that moment they cannot free themselves from the memory and the three end up living in confinement together and trying to support each other.

A conversation between two Ecuadorian friends in the city of Panama.