Alexandra Cuesta cites eternal wanderer Henri Michaux as one of the inspirations for her first feature. It’s curious, then, that the opening sequence of Territorio (the first film Cuesta shot in her native Ecuador) shows us a boat heading for the shore. It is very likely that, to Cuesta, the image of water hides the same connotation than it does to the author of “The Sea of Breasts”: returning home, being sheltered in the mother’s womb. Without detouring from the formal approaches of her previous work, Cuesta traces a journey that crosses the country from north to south, drawing a human cartography in which the aim is to achieve an impossible balance between the foreign traveler’s gaze and the earnest familiarity of those who return home temporarily.

Territorio

A meditative film and counterpart to the eponymous album by composer and violinist Bryan Senti, interweaving neoclassical and indigenous Latin American music. Memories document something distant yet also familiar. Manu: A Visual Album is a documentation of the landscapes and traditions of Ecuador that are on the verge of disappearing. Filmed entirely on 16mm, it explores the highlands of the Andes, the coast of Ecuador and parts of the Amazon.