Discoveries from Ecuador World Cinema

José, trapped in a sitcom, has to process an endless flood of documents in order to make a career. His boss determines his amount of work and success. Once full of zest, José soon begins to rebel.

A young woman is escaping at full speed through a thick jungle from a ferocius beast. Suddenly, a mysterious door. Could it lead her to salvation?

Three couples rehearse a scene in the car.

Ladies acting and blowing kisses.

Cosme Renella entering the plane.

Indigenous women at Lake San Pablo

Road construction

Children playing

Love triangle

Faces Bullfighters

Doctors Meeting

Woman and man on horseback

Paseo de las banderillas announcing the bulls

Arch of Santo Domingo The Tram

Ingratiation of Simón Bolívar

Inspired by the brief and yet intense life of Ecuadorian poet Medardo Ángel Silva, this movie reveals intimate details of one of the most important Guayaquilean writers of 19th century: his passionate and deep poetry, his strong attraction towards death, his impossible love for a 15 year old young woman and his continual conflict with an hypocritical and conservative society.

At a new school, Joaquin struggles to find his place, chasing connection in all the wrong directions, while David, surrounded by friends, quietly fades into the background of his own life. As fleeting relationships, misunderstandings, and silent expectations shape their days, both are forced to confront what it truly means to belong. Heterophony explores isolation, identity, and the disconnect between being seen and being understood.

Social hotspots can be found everywhere. Recognizing this, rapper Carlos Zamora started his project Rapflektion in Braunschweig and the surrounding area, to educate teenagers to communicate responsibly, respectfully and without violence through rap. For the past seven years he has been travelling to Latin American countries known for their drug cartels and violence. Other than church initiatives, Zamora's rap workshops for disadvantaged youth are frequently the only projects available for these teenagers.

An automotive and lifestyle photographer from London in a creative drought heads to Ecuador to rediscover the passion for his craft from the back of a motorcycle.

In 1987, a film school was founded next to a working-class town in western Cuba. For over three decades, hundreds of film students documented the lives of its people. Qué tiempos aquellos takes us to Pueblo Textil to explore what these memories mean today, what emotions they stir, and how they transform over time. A documentary about memory as both personal and collective experience.

Based on a dream, Christian invites Nancy, his grandmother, to recognize herself in the moor. Unaware of the warnings that the wind may reveal to them.

An exploration of the city of Guayaquil through the sounds heard on its main streets over a period of 12 hours.

TRINIDAD is a vibrant and intimate documentary capturing a ballroom event hosted by CARISHIN.X in Quito, Ecuador.

On the brink of death, a girl plunges into a delirium that glimpses the intertwined lives of a pianist and a dancer. / An exploration of the fragility of existence and the search for artistic expression in a universe of blurred boundaries.

On the verge of death, a girl immerses into a delirium that glimpses the intertwined lives of a pianist and a dancer. / An exploration into the fragility of existence and the search for artistic expression in a universe of diffuse borders.

The action of this short film elapses in the form of an interior monologue, a narrative technique of the consciousness flow developed in the literature of the early twentieth century. This method is used to reveal the thoughts of a man who reflects on his life in a slum of Ecuador.

Jaime Romero is an Ecuadorian mountaineer who tells us about his experiences with the Carihuairazo volcano in Tungurahua, Ecuador. He laments the melting of the glacier that covered the summit of the volcano due to climate change. The disappearance of the glacier is a tragedy for the inhabitants of the cities of Riobamba and Ambato, who depend on the water that comes mainly from the glacier for their drinking water and livestock needs, as well as for irrigating their land. He also watches helplessly as a lagoon, the "frozen lagoon," forms and expands as a result of the melting. Jaime concludes by saying that we are water and if we do not connect with nature, we will not survive.

In Chimborazo, the water in the rivers no longer sings, but carries debris. Through the testimonies of farmers whose lives depend on these waterways, the short film reveals a painful truth: pollution that originates in the city flows into the fields, poisoning crops, drying up hopes, and destroying the sacred bond between water and land.

The relationship between a daughter and her father is drowning along with the lack of communication between them. The water begins to invade the house until it seems impossible to keep it from entering.

The story of Gonzalo Cabrera, Cuenca's last punk, recalls his rebellious youth, the emergence of chaos, the decline of a subculture, and his struggle to revive punk in the city before it disappears with him.

The story of three Ecuadorian families who, separated by migration, fight to reunite.

Floralba Corozo is one of the oldest singers of alabaos and arrullos in Telembi, an Afro-Ecuadorian community that prepares for several months to remember their deceased; to understand and caress death closely, which is the most real way to understand life.

A collective documentary that retells the struggles for the defense of the land and collective rights of the Ecuadorian Amazon, tracing the memory of the indigenous movement from 1980 to today.

Series of testimonies and stories from various characters of this era, confronting them with the legacy of the revolutionary leader and President of Ecuador, Eloy Alfaro. It doesn't approach the subject from a historical perspective but rather a social one, aiming to showcase the different facets of the country today.

In Riobamba, a largely indigenous city in the central Ecuadorian mountains, signs of an almost forgotten historical memory remain. The city's museum and cultural center is, at the same time, full of objects and empty of people. A work of urban art is proposed to inhabit one of the exterior walls of the museum in an iconic building for the city and, from its genesis, its relevance, its condition as an object and the possibility (or not) of being imbued with consciousness is questioned.

The girl finds a sofa on the street and brings it home. And it turns out that the sofa is actually a monster that devours those who sit on it - they get into the world of lost things. How to get out of there?

Isabel writes letters to her children that she will never send. She lives with Jose, her youngest, and together they experience the aftershocks of violence, a labyrinth that haunts them. However, Isabel seeks to get out of that loop, and so she burns the letters to burn the past and be able to once again move forward.

A group of illegal migrants are a short distance from crossing the border to their final destination. Gerardo, a quiet young man, carries a suspicious backpack. Lucía, a kind young woman, is the only one who discovers the contents of the backpack. Together they manage to escape from the immigration police, but as they approach the final stage of their jounrney, only one will cross.

Have you ever felt like you were being watched? That there was someone or something following you in the shadows?

Ma Luisa puts all her energy into not showing that there is something in her life that makes her unhappy.

"mitos, leyendas y tradiciones". A day in the life of Severino; a young bus conductor. Here you will be the spectator of four amazing stories that take place in Santa Elena.

Francisco (14) and his sister Damaris (8), live in a small house in the mountain. The kids look to create their own christmas after the death of their uncle, the one that used to be the soul of the party.

The story of 4 different families: stories and conflicts around the perpetuation of a paternal last name, that doesn´t describe the role that women had had in the constitution of families in our societies.

Chloe, a woman focused on her work and with no space in her life for love, decides to put everything aside to reunite with her soul mate.

The documentary shows us the latest porn cinema in the city of Quito, they tell us their experiences and how they have managed to survive over the years, which allows a broader view of how an old porn cinema works.

Charlie Chaplin look-a-like doing bullfighting.

In Rotuno, within the protected area of the Rio de Janeiro Protocol, 40 men armed with blowguns and weapons begin their wedding rites, never before filmed, for the Sarayaku festivities. Yaku, who returns to his land after many years, goes on an epic journey where he must share hallucinogenic drinks, go hunting in total darkness, make his crown of feathers and participate in the dance of the spears...

Hall dance 1929

Ballroom dancing

People watching the plane