Eriberto Gualinga

Helena is 17 years old and studies in Finland. Her father, a Swede, and her mother, indigenous Kichwa of Sarayaku, live at the heart of the Amazon in Ecuador.

In the process of creating a collective documentary with an intimate and artisanal gaze, Afro-descendant and Indigenous youth of the Chocó Rainforest in Esmeraldas, become inspired by their elders’ life stories and ongoing defense of territory and denounce a common experience of marginalization and contamination of their rivers.

It’s spring in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Uyantza festival is underway with the community celebrating all that the forest has to offer. Meanwhile, news is breaking around the world that a novel virus is spreading and a state of emergency is declared across the country. As people test positive for COVID-19 in the community, some families decide to leave and head deeper into the jungle. Disconnected from school, friends, the internet, and work, one family learns to reconnect with life in the forest. The children begin to unlearn the national curriculum, and instead are taught Indigenous knowledge that mainstream schools normally pass over. As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the planet, the family reconnect to their ancestral ways, but as news arrives that Ecuador’s lockdown will end soon, will the family choose to return?

The elders of the Kichwa community of Sarayaku preserve the history of their land for the youngest. They save the knowledge of their traditions against modernity and the invasion of their territory.

The documentary recreates the mythical journey made by the native peoples of Sarayaku in the Amazon, who navigated down the river for months until they reached Kachi Urku, the mountain of salt.