Discoveries from Ecuador World Cinema

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

Lucia, a 16-year-old punk rock fan and singer, lives with her family. When her mother is accused of attempted murder after pushing her step-father down a flight of stairs, Lucia is left in charge of her siblings.

A portrait of Jaime Roldos, Ecuador's first democratically elected president, who died with his family when their plane crashed in the mountains.

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

After losing her grandfather when she was less than a year old, a now very conflicted teen must learn how to navigate her grief even though she absolutely does not want to

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.

In a dystopian reality plagued by corruption, a rebellious government employee finds an alternate way to change the system: kill the corrupt.

Gathered in a shelter in an Ecuadorian forest, adolescent victims of sex trafficking take their tentative first steps in their newly recovered lives.

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 a small and strange town where the words don’t exist, Beueu will try to approach the girl Laralara.

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.

A 13-year-old girl living in a Buenos Aires shantytown falls for a 17-year-old boy who earns a living juggling in a Spiderman costume.

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.

Camila suffers from amnesia and has filled the emptiness in her life with an imaginary world where a giant fish acts as her guardian. She escapes into this dreamlike realm to flee from a blurry past. However, when the boy she loves disappears, she must embark on a journey to find him and uncover what lies hidden between dreams, the fantastical, the past, and the future.

Legend has it that on July 7, each 100 years in "enchanted lake", a mysterious girl will test her charms to help the people of good heart and punish people corrupt.

Shortfilm talking about the problems that low resources cancer children have to deal to get a proper treatment.

Miranda, a lesbian photographer from Guayaquil living in Buenos Aires returns to Ecuador for an exhibition of her work. Magdalena, a simple girl after a big fight with her boyfriend decides to go party with Monica, her best friend, little she knew that night she would meet Miranda, a woman that will change the way she concieve her life.

When her parents tell her they’re getting a divorce, Moni does what any 16-year-old girl would do: she claims that the Virgin Mary speaks to her. What she doesn’t imagine is that her little lie will turn into one of the greatest religious frauds of the 20th century.

A Hungarian explorer claims to have discovered a "Gold Library" inside a cave. Lacking evidence, he tries to get the recognition he believes he deserves but struggles to get support from the local governments and religious leaders.

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.

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.

SapiKuna is a documentary exploring the ancestral knowledge of the Kichwa cultures in the Ecuadorian highlands. Through voices, rituals, and landscapes, it highlights the connection between memory, identity, and resistance.

A photographer is called by a union leader to take photographs of a workers' protest that ends in a massacre by the State. The photographed material and the photographer must be kept safe.

Antonia is a little photographer. She likes to capture special moments with her camera and she will spend her vacations with her grandparents. Although she go to the beaches with her dog who isn't very happy about it, Mario her grandfather, is a very quiet man, and he will help her study math. This vacations seems to be destined to be a failure, but it all will change when Mario give her a peculiar present, an old Polaroid camera. New friends, adventures, paint wars, ghosts and much more.

Two hustlers are united on the run after an innocent robbery. They travel the country seeking to subsist at the cost of the ingenuity of people.

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.

Humanity has been desolated and only machines are left to roam the world.

Insensate follows the unfolding of three eerily intertwining vignettes as a trio of damaged women, Carina, Rachel and Blair struggle to connect with transient newcomers in their lives.

Elena is a frustrated woman living a monotonous life. She meets Ramiro, a painter who was once famous and acclaimed, but now lives only on memories and attempts to reinvent himself. Elena is seduced by Ramiro's stale rhetoric and enters a dreamlike world where everything changes. Infected by Ramiro's bohemian lifestyle, she surrenders to a spiral of lovers driven by jealousy and possessiveness. Her certainties gradually begin to blur.

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.

Yulimar seeks to become independent. Jesús, a rap musician, searches for the best place to continue singing. Valeria is looking to get out of a complicated relationship to move forward and be able to get her daughters out of Venezuela. Several stories are being woven where these characters will somehow find a way out to continue their path.

Ecuadorian athlete Millán Ludeña, embarks on his new adventure to be the first athlete to register a new Guinness World Record for his beloved country.

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.

Filmmaker José Cardoso’s deeply personal Flowers is an exercise in sense-making, led by both his conscious and unconscious mind. Navigating the barrage of online news images produced each day, he transforms these into an unexpected web of connections that link an Amazonian community threatened with the destruction of their land to an extreme right-wing Brazilian President who justifies the exploitation of the Amazon by the rising price of resources precipitated by the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh teaches us to make our enemy the object of our compassion, and the filmmaker’s three-year-old son marvels at the frogs and flowers growing in the garden.

A botanical expedition in Ecuador's Amazon becomes a medium for an indigenous Huaorani community to remember the genocidal colonization it suffered in the 1960s. Meanwhile, a group of ecologists from the capital tries to stop oil exploitation in the last remaining forests where the isolated Huaoranis still live, who to this day refuse to come into contact with civilization.

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

A novelist's sense of reality and illusion becomes blurred when her family confronts a mysterious drowning in the pool of their home.

The documentary registers the reaction of the inhabitant the communities of Imbabura, Zamora, Chinchipe and others Ecuadorian provinces under the influence of mining. The testimonies of the leaders and the protagonists tell the facts that are at the center of this story.

Ten years after General Antonio José de Sucre - Grand Marshal of Ayacucho- was murdered in the Berruecos jungle, Colombia. The inquiry into his death is reopened, Captain Alejandro Godoy take charge as prosecutor. Several political motives mean that the case must definitively be drawn to a close. Godoy discovers that a large part of the documentation produced during the original inquiry has been destroyed. With his own life in danger, Godoy discovers a highly intricate plot that put an end to Sucre's life.

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.

After a nuclear catastrophe, a man who did not know how to continue living in silence went out to look for sounds, voices and whispers in the remains of a scorched nature.

Chinese mining in Ecuador’s mountains sets the stage for an epic battle between eco-guerrillas and a corrupt government in an intensely dramatic feature by former CPH:DOX winner Marc Wiese.

Victor was victim of a violent attack during the government of León Febres Cordero in 1987. More than 30 years later, he decides to free himself from the weight of the secrets and ghosts that has carried for many years and speak out.

On the northern coast of Ecuador, on Tolita Island, Washo, a fifty-year-old unemployed fisherman tempted by necessity accepts the invitation of his friend who brings him to raid a tomb, insisting he knows the location of a new Moche treasure.

A well-known filmmaker follows a famous mountain climber to Nepal, documenting the journey. Conversations about their lives lead to philosophical reflections, as the mountain challenges their motives. As days go by, the higher altitude and the depletion of oxygen will raise their debate to interior and transcendental territories, putting at stake their trajectories and their egos when facing the mountain and its millenary depth.

A woman suffering from drug addiction is interned against her will in a clandestine rehabilitation center where she suffers many cases of abuse and fights to survive against violence, prejudice and the loss of dignity.

Mariano Cruz Ordóñez is an Ecuadorian bullfighter at the end of his artistic career. Mariano was a figure of bullfighting in Ecuador and participated in the most important bullrings of his country and the world. The glory years have passed and prohibitions have arisen regarding bullfighting shows, and the only thing left is, with tenacity and faith, to fight against various adverse circumstances looking for a chance to move foward.

Picchu is a story that follows the journey of an Andean girl named Mayu and the unconditional support of her mother. The path will not be simple. Mayu will rely on her determination and her mother's teachings to overcome her fears and doubts to fulfill her destiny. Picchu reflects the reality of many children around the world.

Baldomero, a former boxer, faces a new reality after several years in prison. Filled with guilt and deep personal conflicts, he wanders aimlessly through downtown Quito, trying to recognize the places he once inhabited. He meets Amelia, a techno-cumbia singer and hopes to rebuild his life, but the ghosts of the past are more alive than ever.

The documentary follows the classification, preparation and participation in the Olympic Games of the athletes Beatriz Pascual, Rolando Saquipay and Claudio Villanueva.

Across the Amazon, Indigenous guards are unarmed patrols that peacefully defend ancestral territories against threats like oil, mining and poaching. They use diverse technologies to monitor their lands, and when necessary, force out illegal operations and actors. Most of this daily work, which involves lengthy hikes and patient observation, goes unseen. This film depicts the process of the Indigenous Guard: its patrols, its watchful vigilance over the landscape, and its support of the community. Their work as guards helps ensure that destruction in the Amazon doesn’t advance, and that their community has the vital space it needs to live life on their own terms.

The definitive documentary about Rayuela, an alternative rock band that reunited in 2019 for a final concert. What broke them apart? This question will be answered as the band's story is told.

Two men want to kill one another during a game of chance, risk and transmigration.

In the middle of a laundry we discovered an improvised mechanical workshop. An older man talks with his tools. His son invades the space wanting to film it and at the same time making him an unusual proposal: rebuild a motorcycle together. The proposal baffles the father who little by little allows the son to enter into his world. The son begins to delve into questions and questions that go from the mechanical to the personal and open up seemingly hidden conflicts. Is it possible to restore a relationship like you repair a machine?

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

Compilation of 18 animated short films made by Spanish-speaking artists from around the world for the Filmoteca Maldita Short Film Festival. This collection contains very diverse works, both in technical and thematic aspects, although they all share a genuine spirit of dedication and creativity.

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?

An indigenous laborer takes revenge against the abuse from his landowner.

En el Nombre de la Hija tells the story of a nine-year old girl whose name is in dispute. Manuela has been named alter her socialist-atheist father, but her catholic-conservative grandmother insists she should carry the name the first daughters of the family have carried for generations: Dolores. The story takes place in a Valley in the Ecuadorian Andes, during the summer of 1976. Manuela and her little brother, Camilo, are spending vacations with their cousins and grandparents at the family's farmhouse. Eager to defend her father's ideas, Manuela confronts her cousins and grandparents, but an unexpected encounter leads her to confront herself instead. Hidden in the family's abandoned library, schizophrenic uncle Felipe is devoted to setting words free from the constraints of dogmas. His wisdom sets Manuela free from her own dogmas and forever changes her relationship with words, including her own name.