Discoveries from Ecuador World Cinema

2-3 minute short films on 7 deadly sins by 7 amateur directors from 7 different countries.

A journey that recounts the life of Isabel de Godin, a relentless adventurer of the 18th century, who travelled from nowadays Ecuador, through the Amazon Rainforest to France, in pursuit of her dream. Little did she know that through this odyssey she would discover the power of will over the certainty of death. In search of her strenght and her path, we’ll encounter inspiring people, whose experiences rhyme with Isabel’s and give live to this past character, whilst unveiling hidden themes still hushed to this day.

Two cousins are watching an erotic movie on TV, which gives the female cousin ideas. But when will the rest of the family return home?

During Ecuador’s blackouts, a filmmaker films his mother and grandmother, finding in the everyday a refuge from fear outside. An intimate essay on waiting and human bonds.

With the arrival of major international movie theater chains in the late 1990s, the era of the old-fashioned movie theaters in Quito came to an end. For more than 80 years, the city was dominated by iconic movie theaters that captivated audiences like no other. The Bolívar, Variedades, Atahualpa, Alhambra, Capitol, and Fénix theaters, among others, were the gods of cinema that, in their heyday, projected illusions, desires, and fantasies onto the big screen for viewers. This documentary is a journey through time, a reconstruction of that cinematic memory through testimonies, vestiges, and memories.

A young, unsuccessful musician tries to find the lyrics to his new song, but to no avail. An unexpected event disrupts his life, and he does something terrible.

A friendship united by two things: volcanoes and giant tortoises, and a legacy written by science. Journey Back to Alcedo tells a story of unconditional love between two intrepid 70-year-old best friends, on their last climb together to the place where it all began, and the legacy they leave to new generations of female scientists. Today, only 13% of the 33,000 inhabitants of the world's most famous natural laboratory are women working in science. In the face of climate change and its profound impacts on women, this documentary highlights the urgent need for more women in conservation and science, especially in fragile and unique environments such as the Galapagos Islands.

A satire of a conservative armed uprising against the Ecuadorian liberal president Gonzalo Córdova.

A freelance animator faces the demonic incarnation of her artistic fears during the night before the deadline of an important job assignment.

A remembrance ritual where passing through places that have inhabited me, I show myself as a space in demolition, abandonment and construction.

55 years after the mysterious death of father and grandfather Ramiro Endara, Lourdes, with the help of her daughter Camila, begins an investigation looking for the truth, but the clues are little.

Yuyari builds a scarecrow for his family's corn farm. The scarecrow (Sara) comes to life and wants to learn to fly.

Matilde is a woman who decided to live freely in a conservative and chauvinistic country.

The life of Swedish explorer Rolf Blomberg: his books and his films, his photographs and his illustrations. Blomberg explored Ecuador as few others have done and created this vast and exciting work. He arrived in 1934 to study the Galapagos Islands and returned many times to film, write and photograph the natives and the fishermen, the cities and the rainforest. This film explores the explorer through his work. Developed exclusively based on the enormous visual legacy of Blomberg, we travel to a different time and find a view that, despite the passage of time, remains intact. Today, viewing his work, we see how the entire self-identity of the country might have been very different.

A portrait of a queer HIV+ Iranian refugee in Quito.

On a remote rural estate with a large cornfield, two filmmakers debate how to put together a film about a real case of child disappearance. Everything seems to happen as agreed, until they encounter a terrible entity that stalks them.

After nuclear disaster, an immigrant to the now-devastated United States experiences dreams and apparitions about his home.

The extreme passion for Lucha Libre, leads a small group of Ecuadorian amateur wrestlers to face each other in a tournament to win a dream opportunity to fight in the Holy Land of Lucha Libre: Mexico.

Church, Portería and Convent of San Francisco

A man with power from the countryside of Manabi decides to take justice on his own hands and hires a group of hitmen to avenge the death of his son.

A poetic exploration that follows the profound mysteries of the process of grieving through silence and contemplation, told in a non-traditional cinematic narrative, filmed in 16 mm on the Ecuadorian coast.

Manuel a 50 years old man, has led a blameless life. After 25 years of work receives recognition for their work. After an excessive celebration wakes with chilling news.

A young man has lost his identity, and takes a quest to find it, resorting to his ancestors in the province of Chimborazo.

A drift between two cities: Berlin and Quito. A sensitive voice challenges the boundaries of reason through questions born from the everyday: Have you ever thought about how many calculations you make in a day? Prices, distances, inflation, schedules. Do you see your breasts beneath the blue robe? Why did they leave me the necklace but take my underwear? The audiovisual narrative seeks to reach the point where the meaning of hegemonic logic fractures, blending the documentary code with rhetorical elements characteristic of science fiction.

The camera follows movements that we cannot initially identify. Then we realize that we are observing workers on a flower farm and their daily work routines. From now on, we will no longer perceive red roses solely as a symbol of love.

During the Indigenous uprising of June 2022 in Ecuador, thousands of people rose up against neoliberal policies and state repression. Yuyaymanta gathers testimonies from survivors and relatives of the victims, intertwining archives and memory to document physical wounds, emotional scars, and the dignity of resistance. Through these voices, the documentary builds a tribute to those who fought, those who fell, and those who continue to seek justice.

In a post-apocalyptic world, a famished man encounters an abandoned house containing a bountiful feast.

An audiovisual piece that explores the changing soundscape of the Ecuadorian rainforest. Situated at the intersection between documentary and sound art, it combines unprocessed field recordings with compositions derived from the natural acoustics of the ecosystem.

The arrival of some strange people to a distant population begins a series of macabre events, habitants and authorities of the place will do their best to make the guilty pay for his actions, without knowing, that could possibly discover a terrifyin truth.

The emotional decline of a person after being the host of an energetic parasite.

Santa Rosa, a small town in Cuenca, is inhabited almost exclusively by women and children. The men have emigrated to the United States. The nostalgia for the absent is permanent. However, under the leadership of the women, the community group survives by asserting its social sense, despite the poverty.

A conversation between a father (the poet) and his son (the illustrator) about imagination as the creator and, at the same time, transgressor of reality.

In 1960s South Africa, a close-knit community from Die Vlakte was forcibly and violently uprooted to make way for the Stellenbosch University as part of the Apartheid regime’s segregation measures. José Cardoso’s What the Soil Remembers recounts the traumatic effect displacement had on residents by bringing to the foreground a university that is still grappling with its racist legacy. To this day, the Die Vlakte community is fighting for justice and seeking reparations with little to no tangible solutions.

In 1989 the ecuadorian writer Gustavo Garzón Guzmán was arrested and acussed of being part of a political movement the Movimiento Montoneras Patria Libre (MPL). A year pass to get his freedom but in the time returning to his job and literary studies on de 10th november of 1990 he was vanished during the Rodrigo Borja Cevallos presidential time.

Jaime falls dead abruptly, while he works on his field in the Ecuadorian Andean paramo. He is the newest victim of a deadly and mysterious disease that has struck his indigenous commune. as his body lies lifeless on the ground, his animal spirit emerges from his body. he wanders through the andean moors until he meets the spirit of his wife and together, they begin their journey to the land of the dead.

Chimborazo, Ecuador. At 6,267 meters high, in one of the world´s highest volcano, the Chimborazo, Baltazar Ushka has been working for more than thirty years now. He works chopping ice out of the glacier, later to be used to cool fruit juices at the popular market in Riobamba, Ecuador. This documentary travels through time in a circular way, to create a life´s portrait of the last Chimborazo Ice Man. It's the second part of the most famous and award-winning documentary in Ecuador: Los Hieleros del Chimborazo. 1980.

Anticipating the return of her father, Alicia a little pianist awaits his arrival, however, he does not return home. Searching for answers, she comes across objects from her childhood, an encounter that prompts her to see her father's absence.

Centenary Festivals 1822.

As a result of a domestic accident, my grandmother started being monitored at home. Day and night cameras record her movements, interfering with her privacy. After some time observing, I began to notice something different with her.

Theater women or 'the comics'

Fishing boat

Airmen and friends at Hacienda San Carlos

Aerial views of the city of Quito

If films are memory, what happens when a film is lost? If films exist only in the memory of those who were able to see them, does the filmmaker who created them even exist? Bitterness and nostalgia cut with discarded frames, Gustavo Valle saves shelved and dampened traces of film confirming that: "It was", that "It existed", that "It exists", that "It is".

Mariangula, an obsessed lady, to win she will do everything in her power to reach for glory, but her actions will bring fatal consequences for her and the people around. Mariangula based on the most traditional legend of Ecuador.

An American nun finds peace and forgiveness through plant medicine in the Amazon Rainforest.