Self-portrait at 13

Autorretrato a los 13

Partly the video diary of a 13-year-old boy, partly a mother’s recordings of her news broadcasts, this is a fully original, delirious and energetic snapshot of Ecuadorian identity.

A room, a Virgin Mary, toothpaste ads, bikinis, the Ecuador-Peru war, Venezuelan soap operas, late-night news, the devil and the sun — a child innocently discovers cinema. A feverish video mix reflects on Ecuadorian identity at the turn of the century. A mother and her son use the same video tapes to record themselves in parallel timelines, overlapping different impressions of the world. Images from the 1990s reveal to us a world still failing to solve the same old problems.