Lejanía

Synopsis

Nelson and Rigo have discovered loneliness and melancholy in the American Dream. They long for their homeland, their families and their wives. In 1997 the brothers recorded their first video letter for María and Gerardina, evoking the past, intangible presences and perhaps a future home. This is a love story encapsulated in VHS tapes that travelled from New York to Tres Marías in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Biography and Films

María Melina Wazhima Monné is an Ecuadorian-Catalan filmmaker and cultural manager. She has been a university lecturer on film and a film editor. She is the cofounder of the art collective Ñukanchik People and the Audiovisual Memory Archive of Ecuadorian Migration (AMAME). Lejanía is her debut film and is based on archival footage and video letters from Ecuadorian families in the 1990s.