Juan José Luzuriaga

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.

Nunkui is 13 years old and lives in an Amazonian Shuar community with her grandparents, uncles and cousins. She frequently dreams of the feminine spirit of the garden, named Nunkui like her. The girl does not know this spirit, she does not understand her dreams and is afraid; she fears that it is a dangerous spirit, an Iwianch. Curiosity, anguish and food shortages lead Nunkui to discover the knowledge of Rosa, her great-aunt, who still cultivates a traditional garden (aja shuar). Little by little, the garden and the sacred songs (anents) become a refuge for the young woman.

Nunkui is 13 years old and lives in an Amazonian Shuar community with her grandparents, uncles and cousins. She frequently dreams of the feminine spirit of the garden, named Nunkui like her. The girl does not know this spirit, she does not understand her dreams and is afraid; she fears that it is a dangerous spirit, an Iwianch. Curiosity, anguish and food shortages lead Nunkui to discover the knowledge of Rosa, her great-aunt, who still cultivates a traditional garden (aja shuar). Little by little, the garden and the sacred songs (anents) become a refuge for the young woman.

A precarious con artist manipulates the family of a “miracle girl” and creates a business so large and lucrative that it will inevitably get out of hand.

A precarious con artist manipulates the family of a “miracle girl” and creates a business so large and lucrative that it will inevitably get out of hand.

A precarious con artist manipulates the family of a “miracle girl” and creates a business so large and lucrative that it will inevitably get out of hand.

When Luisa, 45, returns from a psychiatric clinic after a bout with severe postpartum depression, she enters a new confinement in her dazzling home, surrounded by family members and a brigade of servants who expect her struggles to remain invisible. Unable to continue playing the role of the perfect housewife, Luisa's only escape is to waltz elegantly into madness.

Vicky is fisherman by day and bar owner at night. When she was a little boy her dream was to be a radio soap opera star, nowadays she dreams of falling in love again. How is it possible that a small, barren place in the third world has managed to achieve this special form of freedom and tolerance?

Julia, a thirty-year-old newly separated and in search of a life change, finds two new friends. The three begin to live an intense friendship that turns into a love triangle in which their frustrations and fears of not knowing if they will manage to be who they dreamed to be when they were younger.

Julia, a teenager from Latin America, has lived in the U.S. most of her life. She is popular, a successful Youtuber and wants to become prom queen. Everything changes abruptly when her family has to return to Ecuador. What will she have to face? Getting used to a new culture and a catholic high school will not be easy. The "gringa" becomes the target of "La Reinas", three popular bullies who rule the school. Julia is now a misfit who will have to earn her new friends' affection in order to survive.

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

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

A beautiful woman turns to prostitution. She must surrender her income to the leader of a human trafficking ring, but her daughter’s illness and a drug addiction prevent her from delivering her usual share. An unexpected event will give her the opportunity to stop obeying and take justice into her own hands.

A documentary about faith through an essay on aging and the fear of death. A story about a group of elders in a ghost town and their lifetime struggle for the respect of their culture and their different ways of understanding faith, where the need of water is the main element that supports their demands and ancient culture is presented as an heritage for new generations to come, that if their home town survives after they are gone. A film that portrays youthfulness as hope, while the main characters reminds us all that nothing is more powerful than our own will and that there is no such thing as a lost cause.

A documentary about faith through an essay on aging and the fear of death. A story about a group of elders in a ghost town and their lifetime struggle for the respect of their culture and their different ways of understanding faith, where the need of water is the main element that supports their demands and ancient culture is presented as an heritage for new generations to come, that if their home town survives after they are gone. A film that portrays youthfulness as hope, while the main characters reminds us all that nothing is more powerful than our own will and that there is no such thing as a lost cause.

Afraid to face upcoming parenthood and the ultimate deadline for his long-awaited novel, a once-promising writer develops a crush on a defiant muse, the 16-year-old girl next door, and escapes into a second adolescence, alienating his partner and those who care about him.

An introvert city teenager is sent to his father's limber ranch. While trying to figure out his place as the son of the boss he finds himself in a world packed with naturalized violence.

The documentary follows an expedition led by the adventurer and photographer Jorge Juan Anhalzer, in the heart of the Llanganati, in search of the enormous Inca treasure hidden in the Ecuadorian mountains.

A look at the life of Toty Rodríguez: An actress who made her career in France during the 60s, a well-known Diva in Ecuador as well as an icon of the women rights. She returns to Paris with her nephew to revisit her past in a town that changed her life.

Starting her senior year in high school, Sara doesn't have many friends and is caught between an overbearing mother, and a more understanding father. With uneasiness at school and tension in the household, Sara escapes to smoke in a little alley alone – that is – until Andrea, a new classmate, arrives. A close friendship develops to all that can see, but behind closed doors, an intimate relationship unfolds, which, when discovered, throws everything into disarray.

The documentary chronicles the 139 years of the ex penitentiary García Moreno in Quito, Ecuador, and traces left by the inmates to be transferred to the new prison in the province of Cotopaxi.

Vengo Volviendo tells the story of Ismael, who was raised by his grandmother and seeks to leave Ecuador in order to migrate to the United States. Along the way, he encounters a host of interesting people and learns of some interesting tales.

Documentary about Alberto Spencer, Ecuadorian-Uruguayan footballer, regarded as the best Ecuadorian footballer of all time.

Elena comes back to Ecuador to help her father overcome his illness. She spends most of her time between drugs and alcohol. While visiting her grandpa in the Andes Elena gets involved in the fight for water access in an indigenous community. She gradually understands that among family secrets, corruption and dark perversions commitment and beauty can emerge.

Jorge, a young Ecuadorian, is unexpectedly in the middle of the jungle as an inexperienced soldier. At first, Jorge is confident that military experience makes you a recognized and respected man. But he finds out that the reality is very different; as the private may face neglect, hunger, death and nature, especially human nature. Captive in an enemy camp, Jorge must discover who he has become as he recovers from his injuries and struggles to escape with his fellow prisoner Hugo or stay there under the care of the Peruvian nurse Dolores. Difficult decisions ... beyond the target and border that divides them are abound.

Raul Lara, an Ecuadorian luthier, works around seven months in the construction of each instrument. Sometimes staying for four consecutive months inside his workshop, place in which time and space are surreal. The guitar becomes alive and receives its soul in here.

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.

Between the city and the countryside, the subtle and modern forms of slavery unfold. A girl waits for the pick-up truck that will transport her to the city. Once there, amidst a never-ending row of walls and fences, she peeks into the entrance to a school. Lined up and in uniform, those girls are not the ones Carmen will join.

Is there an audience for Latin American movies? These are some of the questions posed by an Ecuadorian filmmaker whose latest movie was a commercial flop. He embarks on a query to find answers to his questions and relief for his despair. His research leads him to a giant contraband market in the port city of Guayaquil, where pirated movies from all over the world are sold for one dollar each. Here, he discovers a number of Ecuadorian low budget movies produced by amateurs, with titles he had never heard of before: from action packed productions to evangelical melodramas.

Every city has its secrets, but it is probably inside houses, behind their silent walls, where they are most intense and human. The Alabado House was built in 1671 as part of Quito’s colonial Old City, surviving centuries of earthquakes, poverty and decay. Over the past five years, dozens of manual laborers have been working to restore it. But its miraculous beauty conceals a long and tragic history. For it was the oppressed indigenous masses who built the Old City, the largest in Latin America.

Jessica is a rebellious 17-year-old living with her aunt and grandmother in Quito. Her absent mother has stopped sending money, causing rifts within the family. When she decides to search for the father she's never met, she ends up in the country home of her father's brother and his wife, where the mirrors are always covered and the air is thick with fog and mystery.

In an unknown first world airport the arrival of an ecuadorian flight is heard. The 'members of the European Union' passby migration, while the 'others', in the other line, wait. In the middle of the claims, a group of ecuadorians is arrested. They are taken to the Room, where they wait to be deported. Seems like everyone hides something, like PROMETEO the youn magician with his hands tied like a delinquent who has a 'magical' trunk as luggage. Time passes, a way of being, Ecuador happens in this waiting room. Seems like there is no possible exit. Meanwhile, a different but well-known way of life takes place. The only thing left as a promising way out is illusion.

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.

With intertwined life stories, this film starts from the questions: Is Ecuadorian society essentially mestizo? What is a mongrel? This documentary aims to bring to the fore issues that have been poorly resolved both in the way in which Ecuador defines itself as a country, and in the subjectivity of its inhabitants.

A murder sets in motion a series of tragedies that find their way to the city morgue's Dr. Arturo Fernandez. Physically and emotionally isolated, Arturo develops an intimate relationship with the personal lives of his cases, forcing him to confront his connection to the living and the dead. This dark, serpentine tale offers a richly textured rendering of Ecuador's capital.

One day five women from Quito, friends in their teens, decide to get back together after fourteen years. Helena is waiting for her second child, Marina lives the ups and downs of infidelity, Diana, an early widow, shares her loneliness with her 15 year old daughter and Tamara has not abandoned the random life of nightclubs, men and drugs. The purpose of their get-together is to visit their old classmate, Alejandra, who is consumed by an illness.

1809-1810: mientras llega el día is a 2004 Ecuadorian historical-dramatic film, directed by Camilo Luzuriaga and starring Marilú Vaca, Aristides Vargas and Gonzalo Gonzalo. The plot is based on the book by Juan Valdano, and revolves around the events that took place in the city of Quito between August 10, 1809, when the First Cry of Independence took place in the Spanish colony of the Presidency of Quito, and on August 2, 1810, when the Massacre of the Próceres occurred in the hands of the peninsular authorities.

1809-1810: mientras llega el día is a 2004 Ecuadorian historical-dramatic film, directed by Camilo Luzuriaga and starring Marilú Vaca, Aristides Vargas and Gonzalo Gonzalo. The plot is based on the book by Juan Valdano, and revolves around the events that took place in the city of Quito between August 10, 1809, when the First Cry of Independence took place in the Spanish colony of the Presidency of Quito, and on August 2, 1810, when the Massacre of the Próceres occurred in the hands of the peninsular authorities.

Between Marx and a Naked Woman is the adaptation of a novel written by Ecuadorian Poet, Jorge Enrique Adoum. The scenes of this film insert us into Ecuador in the sixties, when the electoral struggle, convoked by the military government for a new return to democracy, is in full force. Galvez’s left-wing party must elect its candidate, but he is shoved to one side because of the criticism of the party’s political leadership. While his struggle becomes bitter, he must withstand the frustration of not being able to offer full love to Margaramaría, another party member.