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El eco

The Echo | Das Echo
Encounters 2023
© Radiola Films
A young mother runs across a mountain meadow with her children and they save a sheep from drowning. A girl cares for her elderly grandmother so tenderly that you want to cry while another practices being a teacher with just the right tone of voice, her dolls lined up before her as willing pupils. The fathers are mostly absent: as construction workers or tradesmen, they rarely share their daily lives with their families. In El Eco, a remote village in northern Mexico, life consists of the most elementary things. Being a child here is an intense experience from day one, involving nature, animals and people. But also love, intimacy, illness and death. And education – at least for the younger generation.
Tatiana Huezo has made a name for herself as a sensitive and poetic documentarian (e.g. Tempestad, Forum, 2016). Accompanying three families in her new work, the notion of meandering becomes an informing principle as she brilliantly weaves a host of faces and gestures into a kaleidoscope of unpretentiousness. Almost incidentally, she portrays the care-working matriarchy in a country notorious for its innumerable kidnappings of women and girls. A tender film that celebrates the grace of animals and the children of this earth alike.
by Tatiana Huezo
with Montserrat Hernández Hernández, María de los Ángeles Pacheco Tapia, Luz María Vázquez González, Sarahí Rojas Hernández, William Antonio Vázquez González, Uriel Hernández Hernández, Ramiro Hernández Hernández, Berenice Cortés Muñoz, Andrea González Lima Mexico / Germany 2023 Spanish 102’ Colour World premiere | Documentary Form

With

  • Montserrat Hernández Hernández (Montse)
  • María de los Ángeles Pacheco Tapia (Abuela Angeles)
  • Luz María Vázquez González (Luz Ma)
  • Sarahí Rojas Hernández (Sarahí)
  • William Antonio Vázquez González (Toño)
  • Uriel Hernández Hernández (Uriel)
  • Ramiro Hernández Hernández (Ramiro)
  • Berenice Cortés Muñoz (Bere)
  • Andrea González Lima (Andrea)

Crew

Director Tatiana Huezo
Screenplay Tatiana Huezo
Cinematography Ernesto Pardo
Editing Lucrecia Gutiérrez, Tatiana Huezo
Music Leonardo Heiblum, Jacobo Lieberman
Sound Design Lena Esquenazi
Sound Martin de Torcy
Assistant Directors Grace Villanueva, Nubia J. Saldaña
Production Managers Viviana Zúñiga Rojas, Chrystian Moreno Keymolen
Producers Tatiana Huezo, Dalia Reyes
Executive Producer Maya Scherr-Willson
Co-Producers Viola Fügen, Michael Weber, Doris Hepp
Co-Production The Match Factory Köln
ZDF/Arte La Lucarne Mainz

World sales

The Match Factory

http://www.the-match-factory.com http://www.the-match-factory.com

Produced by

Radiola Films

Photos

Tatiana Huezo

© Ernest Pardo

The Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker has a degree from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico City and a master’s in creative documentary from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Her debut feature film El lugar más pequeño already garnered international attention. Tempestad premiered in the Berlinale Forum in 2016 and won the Ariel film award in Mexico in the categories of Best Documentary and Best Director while her feature film Noche de fuego received a Special Mention from the jury at Cannes. Both films were also entered for the Oscars and the Goya Awards.

Filmography

1997 Tiempo cáustico (Caustic Time); short film 2001 El ombligo del mundo (The Core of the Earth); short film 2005 Retrato de familia (Family Portrait); documentary 2011 El lugar más pequeño (The Tiniest Place); documentary 2015 El aula vacía (The Empty Classroom); documentary · Ausencias (Absences) 2016 Tempestad; documentary 2021 Noche de fuego (Prayers for the Stolen) 2023 El eco (The Echo); documentary

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2023