FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINE
DE CARTAGENA DE INDIAS CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA

On the peaceful waters of Lake Maracaibo, a small battered house made of brass and wood tries desperately to stay afloat while, towed by a boat, it searches for a new place to settle down. On board, in this home that has become a carcass, go those who are its inhabitants. Throughout the film, this powerful image, repeated several times with different families, symbolizes and synthetizes the live – and what´s left of it- in Congo Mirador, a palafitte village in the oil heartland of Venezuela. Threatened by the increasing sedimentation, and suffocated by numerous needs, its people are radically divided between “chavistas” and the opposition. The documentary follows, over several years, the lives of some of them as they struggle between the doubt of staying and the fear of leaving. Once Upon a Time in Venezuela is not only the story of a place doomed to disappear, but of the hope that vanishes after the death of Chavez and the new direction of the Bolivarian Revolution.