Valentina Arango

After a fire destructed my house, I return to the places where I grew up looking for childhood recollections. In this journey appears the memory of a photo for Karin Eitel, a young woman, tortured and detained during the dictatorship, to whom I owe my name. A story that my parents never told me, brings me closer to Karin and not just because of my name. In the background, the memory of a childhood in Chile, a country that reconstructed its democracy omitting its own history.

Known for their ranching abilities and their endurance under extreme weather conditions, both Joaquín and Victor leave their families behind to pursue their dreams of earning enough money to buy land of their own back in Chile.

Werner, a stubborn and secretly romantic widower, would die in solitude if it weren’t for Teresa. Although the two elders already have their everyday rituals for dealing with solitude, and the vicissitudes of old age, lately Teresa seems aloof, unhappy. To cheer her up, the old man prepares a celebration in their house, but he has a problem: almost all of their friends are dead. While Werner struggles to get everything ready, and Teresa gets dolled up, someone else is helping them with “the guests”.

Nicolás Molina’s visually astounding Pirópolis drops the viewer in the fiery port city of Valparaíso, Chile and observes a pack of determined volunteer firefighters as they band together to combat turbulent wildfires ravaging the city.