Nicaraguan Documentary “Heiress of the Wind” to Screen in Amsterdam

The historic events that marked Nicaragua in 1980, whose wounds never healed, fuses with the present and the family history of filmmaker Gloria Carrion in the documentary “Heredera del viento” (Heiress of the Wind), a cinematographic work that will screen worldwide at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) from November 15 to 27.

Gloria Carrion’s film was one of 300 works selected from a pool of over 3,000 applications. It will be one of only four productions representing Latin America at the Holland festival.

“It’s a pleasure to share the screen with other stories of the world.  Clearly, I’m bursting with emotion on seeing this film, which began as a dream, be released to the public,” commented Gloria Carrion, the film’s director and producer.

It took four years to bring this production to the big screen.  Filmed in Leon, Managua and Masaya, the film had an international technical team from Spain, Mexico, Colombia, the U.S. and Guatemala.

The result of the effort is an 88 minute work which received backing from international institutions and grants, since Nicaragua offers no funds for the promotion of audiovisual productions.

“Support and promotion of Nicaraguan film continues to be an unresolved area for the Nicaraguan State,” the filmmaker stated.

It all began with images of the earthquake from a super-8

Still from the documentary / Photo courtesy of Gloria Carrion

Carrion’s discovery of an 8-millimeter film clip in a format known as Super-8 taken by her grandfather, Luis Carrion Montoya, in the days following the 1972 earthquake that destroyed Managua, was enough to motivate her to make this documentary.

The idea of this work is to string together the experiences, the vacuums and the nostalgias of Gloria Carrion’s generation, a generation marked by the silence of the war and the unaired traumas that so many adults carry inside them.

For Carrion, all Nicaraguans have an inescapable tie to that era: “The war had a great impact and its effects continue impacting the lives of all the Nicaraguans.  There’s still a great silence around these topics on a social, family and individual level. In Nicaragua there was no Truth Commission that would have given the victims a space to express their wounds and experiences,” she explained.

That silence and that solitude that thousands of Nicaraguans carry with them form part of Gloria Carrion’s search in “Heiress of the wind.”

“The movie attempts to take a deep look at these experiences by generating a kaleidoscope of images, memories and above all questions about ourselves as individuals and as a society,” the filmmaker affirmed.

Through her family archive, these elements are interwoven with Gloria’s life until the film melts the borders that separate public from private. The director assured that over the course of the film, the spectator will be faced with some profound themes such as forgetting, identity, losses and dreams, drawn through a mosaic of past and present images.

“Heiress of the Wind” won’t be screened in Nicaragua until mid-2018.  After the world premiere in Amsterdam, the movie will begin a course of international festivals, where it will project itself alongside the best world productions.

Personal history

Gloria Carrion was born in Managua in 1980. “Heiress of the Wind”, her first feature length documentary, was produced thanks to support from a number of festivals and international institutions.  She holds a Master’s in documentary film from the University of Film in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a diploma from the Tisch School of the Arts in New York.

In 2016 she founded the “Caja de Luz” [“Light Box”] production company and currently is working on her second documentary.  Her previous productions include “Days of light”, “A piece of what family is”, and “Fractales”, among other trials, documentaries and fictional shorts.

Translated by Habana Times