THE MEMORY OF BUTTERFLIES

Peru, Portugal | 2025 | 77 min | col. bn | Spanish, Murui Huitoto

Personal stories and collective memory intertwine on an immersive journey through the colonial past of Peru. Departing from the lives of Omarino and Aredomi, two indigenous youths taken to Europe at the turn of the 19th century to be ‘civilized,’ Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski conducts an unremitting investigation into the brutalities perpetrated against an entire population during the boom of the rubber trade in the Putumayo region. Archive and black-and-white Super 8 film clips alternate on the screen, creating a hypnotic, layered story in which the images explode with all their evocative power reclaiming the memory of a genocide forgotten by the official narrative of history. (S.E.C.) This is a visually stunning poetic work that runs along the boundaries “between the archives and the present, between the living and the dead. It attempts to be a medium, an experience that allows these transmissions.” (T. Fuentes Sadowski)