Ecuador’s Ana Cristina Barragán, an alum of San Sebastian’s post-graduate film school Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola , has come full circle with her second feature “La Piel Pulpo” as it competes at the San Sebastian Festival’s Horizontes Latinos, a year after it participated in the festival’s Work in Progress strand .
You won’t see an octopus in “La Piel Pulpo” . Barragán sees the title as a metaphor for Iris, who in her visit to the city adroitly learns to adapt to her new environment but remains mysterious, transparent, tactile. “Beyond the story of a film, I search for an aroma, a bodily language where characters interact with their world in a non-verbal way,” Barragán told Her non-pro teen actors, selected out of 1,500 aspirants, were not only given acting classes but were taught how to move and be more in tune with their bodies, even training in parkour.
Barragán is in post on a docushort “Soñé que era Piedra” and hopes to shoot her next feature “La Hiedra” in March or April next year in Ecuador. Delving into the theme of family ties once more, “La Hiedra” is led by “How To Get Away With Murder” star Karla Souza who plays 31-year-old Azucena who seeks the son she gave birth to at age 13 and abandoned. She decides that 18-year-old Julio, who is about to age out of the orphanage he grew up in, is that son.