In the family of photographer-turned-filmmaker Misha Vallejo no one ever talks about his grandfather. He only hears about him for the first time as an adult, thanks to an abandoned photo collection. Who was this shadow? And what legacy looms over the family? In his debut film Light Memories, Vallejo shows how the effects of neglect can persist across generations.
The life and works of Ecuadorian writer Marcelo Chiriboga, a key figure of the Latin American literature and member of the “boom” generation. Through interviews, visits to different cities, archival footage and his most important book, a puzzle is woven that blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Alba, 11 years old, passes her days in silence. She loves little animals. She has learned to cope with her mother's illness, helping her to use the bathroom. Alba plays silently so that her mother can rest during the day. One night Alba's mother gets worse, and has to be taken to the hospital. With no one else to take care of her, Alba is sent to live with her father, who she hasn't seen since she was three years old. Living with her father is almost unbearable. Embarrassment, her first kiss, visits to mother in the hospital, Edgar's tender efforts to get close to her, and bullying at school; these are some of the experiences that pave Alba's journey to puberty and to self-acceptance.
Iris and Ariel are 17-year-old twins, who live with their mother and older sister in an old house in the middle of a rocky island covered with molluscs and birds. The teenagers have grown up isolated from the mainland, in a sibling relationship that surpasses the limits of normal intimacy. The abrupt absence of their mother deeply wounds the three siblings, and Iris, moved by a strong need of separating herself from her brother, decides to go alone to the city for the first time.
In this urban comedy, Cristobal, a father and businessman, sees how his wife is awarded a scholarship and moves to Spain, wanting to take him and their children along with her. Humiliated by this, he disappears and wanders throughout Santiago looking for sex. After a pathetic night filled with failures, during which he is unable to forget his conflict, the time to chose shall come: either his family or his ego...
Atahualpa works on the construction of a road that will cross the Llanganates Mountain Range, where it is said that the treasure of Inca Atahualpa was hidden in 1533. One night, Atahualpa is the guide of an expedition that goes in search of the treasure at the beginning of the 20th century.
An introvert city teenager is sent to his father's limber ranch. While trying to figure out his place as the son of the boss he finds himself in a world packed with naturalized violence.
Elena comes back to Ecuador to help her father overcome his illness. She spends most of her time between drugs and alcohol. While visiting her grandpa in the Andes Elena gets involved in the fight for water access in an indigenous community. She gradually understands that among family secrets, corruption and dark perversions commitment and beauty can emerge.
Family problems, if not resolved, repeat themselves. This leads Misha, a young photographer, to question his own family's history only to understand that memory has multiple facades.
Martin and Daniel are inseparable friends. One is a bureaucrat who seeks to overcome every day, even though deep down he knows he will never leave his office desk. The other is a womanizer unstable without goals, but with a mathematical gift.
From the light that falls on the backyard of his house on the day of the equinox without shadow in Quito, and inspired by the "Theory of colors" of Goethe, the director takes us to several cities in America to reflect on the influence that the light has in the understanding of our surroundings.
