Wri/Dir: Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski | Doc 67’
La memoria de las mariposas (The Memory of Butterflies), is a potent but daintily-captured analog documentary that tells the 20th century account of two indigenous Peruvian boys taken to London to adapt to modern European life.
Using black-and-white, hand-processed Super 8 imagery and sepia tinted stock Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski delves into the story of Omarino and Aredomi interweaving her first feature documentary with an expose of Peru’s violent 35-year dictatorship and the colonial rubber trade of the late 19th and early 20th century in Latin America.
With an imaginative lightness of touch Sadowski digs deeply into the men’s past deconstructing the official history of the archive, after sharing the photo with the Indigenous peoples of Peru today, the descendants of Omarino and Aredomi.
LA MEMORIA DE LAS MARIPOSAS serves as a striking ethnographical portrait of lost and marginalised generations devastated by the rubber boom, thus raising the profile of those forgotten or sidelined by the official version of events. @MeredithTaylor
FIPRESCI WINNER FORUM SECTION | SPECIAL MENTION DOCUMENTARY AWARD 2025