An indigenous Kichwa community located in the Ecuadorian Andes awaits the yearly arrival of the cuvivíes, migratory birds that—after a long journey from the north—dive into the lakes of Ozogoche, offering their lives as a sacrifice and filling the cold Andean landscape with an air of mysticism and poetry. A little girl named Sisa and her grandfather will take us on a journey through the idiosyncrasies of the community, a landscape that nurtures the local mythology, the relationship with the Christian faith, and the reasons young adults migrate.
Ozogoche is a documentary that approaches the community with an undercover camera, achieving an intimate portrait of family dramas in a place where young people see no future, a place from which many have embarked on a dangerous journey in search of a better life in the United States. At the same time, the landscape, which is one of the protagonists, is defined by bucolic and poetic moments. However, it also uses the aesthetics by taking advantage of the camera’s plasticity to incorporate spectral visions, emphasizing the indecipherable nature of the sacrifice. The journey of the birds and the journey of the young adults are intertwined in a powerful metaphor about migrants’ fate.

Alfredo Marimon