Direction: Ana Cristina Barragán
Production Country Ecuador
Length: 90 min
Screenplay: Ana Cristina Barragán
Language: Español
Shooting format: DCP Following DCI
At the age of 31, Azucena decides to look for the son she abandoned after getting pregnant at the age of 13. Julio, her 18 year-old son, is in his last year at the orphanage and the two look as if they were the same age. La Hiedra explores the relationship between a mother and her son from the angle of instinct, sleeping bodies, the relationship of those bodies with nature.
"I am interested in films which, more than just a story, carry a smell, a unique flavour in their atmosphere, in their oddity, in the invisible depths of their little occurrences. When I direct I think a lot about bodies. About their clumsiness, about touch, about the expressiveness of hands, about all those things we can't see, but that we can feel. The body of a son and a mother who look the same age, the sleeping body; what happens beneath the eyelids, the place to which the film has no access. The bodies of the other orphans inhabit this story, the collective masturbations, the games and the animality"