This intensely personal film follows Colombian director Inti Jacanamijoy’s grandfather to the ancestral lands of the Wayuu people

Spirituality and history collide in Inti Jacanamijoy’s debut documentary, shot among the rugged, enigmatic terrain of La Guajira, Colombia, the birthplace of his grandfather, José Agustín. Now in his 90s, the older man muses on the inevitability of death, all while looking back on his painful upbringing as a Wayuu Indigenous person. His voiceover, laid over the sight of lush forest and babbling brooks, recalls a cruel separation from his mother and his ancestral land, forced by Catholic invaders. This sense of fracture resonates throughout the family lineage. Jacanamijoy too speaks of his feelings of loss caused by generational trauma.

Against such emotional and geographical disconnects, the film looks to dreams – and even the afterlife – as a possible space for reconciliation and healing. José Agustín’s mother has long passed, yet he often sees her in his nocturnal reveries, filled with all-consuming longing. The film’s sensorial soundscape, which builds a symphony out of natural sounds, further enhancing this metaphysical atmosphere. It is as if the presence of José Agustín’s mother, along with the souls of other Indigenous people, are embedded on the land itself, despite the efforts of colonial occupiers to erase their culture. In a beguiling moment, as the old man envisions his own burial, the film conjures the imagined voice of his deceased mother, welcoming him into another realm of existence.