Synopsis
An internal journey, as an out-loud thought, to the source of life that is the sea, exemplified and humanized by the fishing cycle. Mist is a visual documentary chronicling the fragility and at the same time, the strength of life. It contemplates the human condition, and the different ways of existing using the sea as a metaphorical space, the fishing cycle, and the people that survive through this ancestral relationship. A sea that gives, a sea that takes away.
Using three stories and three coastal sites in northern Peru, Mist speaks about a territory where every life has its meaning; a society that despite its limitations and material situations, continues to seek healing and to give meaning to its story.
From the struggle, tenacity, work and faith found on Bernardino, Francisco and Johny’s boat on the high seas, where human’s struggle with nature and with forces greater than their existence (life and death), through to the balance and action of a community (loaders, haulers, motor-taxi drivers, tractors, family members, merchants, among others), who organized and tempestuous, receive the boats carrying their loads to the shore; to the table of a humble woman, Nicolasa, and her devoted husband Virgilio, whose job it is to fillet the fish, received day after day, offering their work to anyone who will hire them, completing the cycle of life, of strength, fragility, full of humanity.
Director's note
I am interested in returning to the essence of the documentary genre, of human possibilities and everyday actions: a documentary format that respects and tries to capture the time, energy and nuances of life and human beings. It is not a passive gaze, but a dialogue with the environment, actions and situations that occur every day and in which we forget to see poetic, dramatic abilities or to simply be.
Mist is a personal, political and narrative need that gives meaning to that search, to discover, exchange and learn, which is a constant in my life. An exercise in translating into images and sounds, and to be able to reclaim everyday routine, humble lives as documentary devices, as a narrative axis that show the nuances, the information and humanity found in every space in every action. We are drops in this sea of life, all necessary and vital in their individuality as in the collective.