Punku

Two teenagers in Amazonian Peru are mysteriously bound to one another – and to the spectres of a dark supernatural world that follow them – in this Berlinale Forum stand-out.

When Meshia discovers Iván on the banks of the Urubamba River, badly wounded and unresponsive, the two teenagers become inextricably connected. Iván, who has been missing for two years, is taken to the city to receive urgent medical care and reunite with his family – but he’s not the boy they once knew, having withdrawn into haunted silence. Meshia, meanwhile, fully embraces her new life in the city of Quillabamba, entering a beauty pageant and making friends as well as mischief; but she, like Iván, is pursued by a somewhat more terrestrial threat of violence.

A decade in the making, J.D. Fernández Molero’s third feature is an experimental collage told in 21 chapters, making use of an array of film stocks including 16mm, super-8 and digital; black-and-white and colour; Indigenous languages Quechua and Matsigenka as well as Spanish; and visual imagery incorporating TikTok reels and shadow puppetry. A meditation on trauma, loneliness and the need for connection, Punku defies easy interpretation as it strives for the sensorial, drawing from influences as diverse as Amazonian folklore and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s dreamlike cinematic dances on the borderline between realities.

“A sustained exploration of altered states, interior landscapes, and cultural hauntings … The film’s rhythm evokes the disordered cycles of a body under psychic duress.” – Screen Anarchy