Ecuador’s largest nonfiction event, EDOC – Encuentros del Otro Cine – celebrates its 15th edition starting today, Wednesday, May 18, with screenings through Sunday, May 29 in Quito, and through Thursday, June 2 in Guayaquil. This year’s lineup includes over 100 features and shorts, organized thematically, with some highlights noted below:
National nonfiction takes centerstage in the fest’s perennial How We Are Seen, How We See Ourselves sidebar, with select titles including: Fernando Mieles’ PERSISTENCE, about an artist and research scientists pursuing their own agendas in Antarctica; Alexandra Cuesta’s TERRITORY, an experimental meditation on real and imagined travel; and Leon Felipe Troya’s MY AUNT TOTY (pictured), in which the filmmaker explores aging and memory through a portrait of his once-famous actress aunt.
Films exploring humanity’s relation to the environment are featured in The Earth On Which We Live, such as: Georg Tiller’s WHITE COAL, an examination of industrialization through coal concerns in Poland and Taiwan; Peter McPhee’s THE END OF THE DAY (pictured), which frames the supposed end of the world in 2012 through the example of a Chilean community destroyed by industrial pollution; and Lorena Best Urday and Robinson Diaz Sifuentes’ A TAKE OFF, about the impact of development on a rural Peruvian community in the path of a planned airport expansion.
Argentine cinema is celebrated in Long Live Argentina!, with work such as Mariana Arruti’s THE FATHER (pictured), a personal investigation with family secrets; and Virginia Croatto’s THE NURSERY, which tells the story of a kindergarten created for the children of political dissidents who had been disappeared or killed.
Among the event’s other sections are World Panorama, with titles like Alexander Hick’s ATL TLACHINOLLI, which looks at the struggle for survival on the streets of Mexico City; Exchanges and Meetings, which features Mariana Viñoles’ CAROLINA’S WORLD, a portrait of a young woman with Down syndrome; and Seeking Shelter, which includes Avi Mograbi’s BETWEEN FENCES (pictured), about a theatre group in an Israeli detention center for Eritrean and Sudanese refugees.
what (not) to doc 