Territorio

A quiet, contemplative drift through landscapes and faces, asking you to sit still and watch closely rather than follow a story.

Directed by

Alexandra Cuesta

Genres

Documentary

Overview

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.

How it feels

Slow-burning and demanding.

About

Identity, memory, isolation, nature

Content

No violence, gore, sexual content or swearing.

Note

Written by AI, so it can be wrong. Full breakdown

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