Along a river in the Peruvian jungle, Meshia, a Matsigenka teenager, finds young, unconscious Iván, two years after he has vanished. She takes him to a hospital in the city of Quillabamba where he receives urgently needed eye surgery and is reunited with his family. They invite Meshia to stay with them and she takes a job at their bar. Soon, she enters a dark rabbit hole involving a beauty pageant and predatory men, while Iván sets himself apart by refusing to speak. Meanwhile, his damaged sight is haunted by strange visions (evocatively depicted on hand-processed Super 8 and 16mm).
“A chaotically ambitious mystery… the spirit of David Lynch lives on.” — Beatrice Loayza, The New York Times
“Fernández Molero unboxes an ethereal fever dream of a story.” — Susanne Gottlieb, Cineuropa
J.D. Fernández Molero is a Peruvian filmmaker, producer, and editor. His films include Reminiscences (2010), presented at MoMA’s Modern Mondays in 2011, and Videophilia (and other viral syndromes), which won the Tiger Award at the 2015 International Film Festival Rotterdam as well as the Hubert Bals Fund for post-production, and was the Peruvian candidate for the 89th Academy Awards. Punku (2025), his second fiction feature, won the Visions Sud Est production grant and a grant from the Peruvian National Film Fund of the Ministry of Culture for feature film development and production.
More information on the film in our film database and on the Berlinale Forum page. The film is available with english subtitles.
