I search for my father throughout a journey that takes me from Chile back to the city of my childhood in Venezuela. His unexpected death has left an empty house that still holds the traces of our family, exiled since 1973.
As I build a "garden film" with elements from both countries, I attempt to reconcile with the memory of my parents and find a new understanding of our history.
Synopsis
I filmed my elderly father, a Chilean exile who has lived in Venezuela for 46 years, during his visits to my apartment in Santiago, Chile. I am his only daughter, and between his lifelong silence and my guilt for not being able to mend our strained relationship, I place a camera—trying to get closer.
The pandemic forces him to stay in Chile, where his brother takes him in at a house with a vast garden. My lens captures the first glimmers of a loving bond that once seemed impossible. But a sudden heart attack takes him by surprise, and his unexpected death sets off a mourning process in me that turns into a mission: to understand him, to forgive his emotional distance, and to say goodbye.
I travel to Venezuela, where I grew up, to face a house overtaken by weeds, filled with fragments of my parents’ lives. As I clean and empty that space alongside the gardener who accompanied my father in his final years, I also process the unresolved grief of my mother’s passing—she died in that house, far from me. Her diaries, necklaces, and clothes allow me to reconnect with her tenderness. At the same time, testimonies from my blood family, my chosen family, and my spiritual family reveal unknown sides of my parents.
Through this process, I reconstruct the story of my small family, shaped by solitude, distance, and uprootedness. The house becomes a stage where I film small theatrical acts, stepping into the roles of my parents, and attempting to fill the gaps in our family history. The camera I hold—imperfect and fragile—mirrors my emotional state as I create a "cinematic garden" that weaves together the greens of Chile and Venezuela.
In the end, this garden emerges as a place of reconciliation, where I bid farewell to my parents and transform grief into a luminous farewell, allowing memory and life to bloom together.
The Team
Post production image
Daniel Dávila
Since 1997, he has built a career as an animator and post-producer, working in Mexico at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica and founding Kiné Imágenes in Chile, which has provided post-production services to award-winning Latin American fiction and documentary films.
He has worked on more than 50 fiction films, including "De jueves a Domingo" by Dominga Sotomayor, "La Familia" by Gustavo Rondón, "Y de pronto el amanecer" by Silvio Caiozzi, more than 23 documentary feature films, including "El hombre nuevo" by Aldo Garay, 74 Square Meters by Paola Catillo and Tiziana Panizza, and several short films.
He currently runs his company DA cine imagen diseño. He worked with Ximena Pereira on her last two short films, "Espacio Moneda" and "La Diosa Quebrada."
More info >>
Direction / Production
Ximena Pereira
Chilean-Venezuelan filmmaker and educator with experience in fiction short films, documentaries, and TV documentaries.
She graduated from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico with a specialization in screenwriting and from the School of Social Communication at the Central University of Venezuela.
Her works have been featured in festivals such as Sundance, Montreal Films du Monde, Hot Docs, Málaga, Valdivia, Ciné Latino de Toulouse, and San Diego Latino.
She is currently distributing her documentary short film The Broken Goddess. This Chile-Venezuela co-production has won multiple awards, including Best Work and Best Production at the Paracinéfagos Festival, Best Editing at the Venezuelan Film Festival, and the SIGNIS Award at FIDBA Argentina 2024. It was also awarded Best Multicultural Film at the 30th SPE Media Festival in Reno, US.
More info >>
Director of photography
Camilo Paparoni
Graduate in Audiovisual Media with a major in Photography from U.L.A. His passion for photography and social cinema in Venezuela began at an early age under the influence of his father, a photographer.
In 2016, he received the Best Camera award for "Respira." His notable works include "Salta," special mention at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York 2017, and "Voy por ti," an official selection of the Miami Film Festival 2019. He is currently working as the director of photography for the documentary feature film "Casas Muertas" directed by the renowned Venezuelan documentarian Rosana Matecki.
More info >>
Soundman
Lino Ocando
Graduate in Audiovisual Media with a major in Sound from U.L.A. He has a vast career as a sound engineer in field and post-production.
He has worked on more than 12 feature films, 30 short films, and 20 documentaries in Venezuela, the United States, and Panama.
He was the sound engineer for "Yo imposible" by the prominent Venezuelan filmmaker Patricia Ortega and "Historias Pequeñas" by Rafael Marziano, for which he won Best Sound at the Venezuelan Film Festival in Mérida. He has won several awards for best sound and music at festivals.
More info >>
Post production Sound
Marcos Salazar
Sound Engineer and Master in Documentary Film from the University of Chile. He performs sound post-production for fiction films and documentaries at his studio SUE Sonido Inmersivo, where he has worked on over 50 audiovisual projects as a mixer and sound designer.
He has collaborated with renowned Chilean documentarians such as Ignacio Agüero and Valeria Sarmiento, on a posthumous work by Raúl Ruiz. He worked with Ximena Pereira on her last two short films, "Espacio Moneda" and "La Diosa Quebrada."
More info >>
My father’s death made me realize how important he was in my life, despite having spent most of our lives in different cities and never having an easy relationship.
Traveling back to my childhood and Venezuela while filming allowed me to reconstruct the image of my parents—and, in turn, of myself. I discovered that I was shaped by their same pains, and I want to lend them my voice and my body so that, through me, they can release unfinished matters.
That first and fundamental recorded material is the starting point for further exploring the possibilities that cinema offers me as a language and for allowing this film to grow.
My role as a "healer" intertwines with that of a narrator and filmmaker. I seek an artistic language that reflects a complex and intense process, placing the history of migration between Chile and Venezuela in context through my own experience. By sharing this cinematic and personal journey, I seek to resonate with displaced communities and with all those who connect with the idea that family traumas can be healed and that burdens can be left behind along the way.
Sometimes, we must go back to clear the path forward.
Ximena Pereira:
Statement of intent by the director
Companies
.jpg)
Participaciones
Development Workshop
First Works FEMCINE 14
Women's Film Festival, Santiago. Chile. 2024
Winning Project
Audiovisual Fund 2025 Chile for Documentary Development and Rewriting
