Juliana Pallares Latorre
2022 HEAR US Awardee
Undergraduate Film & TV Class of 2022
Juliana Pallares Latorre was born in Ecuador, in the middle of the Andes, in the beautiful city of Quito. She was raised between the city, a fisherman town on the coast of Ecuador and the Amazon rainforest. She is a Director of Photography based in New York City, passionate about film, photography, production design, the environment and is a promoter of education for marginalized indigenous peoples in Ecuador and in Peru.
She is the founder of the project Beyond Lagartococha, through which two indigenous communities in the Amazon have access to education. These two communities which by their isolation and small size, do not have public education options. Juliana began this project at the age of 15 when she saw that the children of these communities had no education and were condemned to illiteracy. She started raising funds for this project by making videos which led her to pursue her career as a cinematographer at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Project
This short narrates the story of Fedelina, a Secoya Indigenous Woman who moves from a remote village in the Amazon to the city of Quito at a very young age.
Now faced with the challenges of adapting to a westernized world, she becomes a cook at a well-known restaurant.
One day, she overhears the chefs discussing their unsuccessful search for an innovative hot sauce for one of their new dishes.
Remembering her grandmother's recipe for Napea, the ancient black hot sauce of the jungle, Fedelina decides to take matters into her own hands.
After twenty long years, she sets out to return to her native land. Throughout this journey, Fedelina is forced to confront the challenges of reintegration and the absence of belonging as she grapples with rediscovering her roots.
As a matter of course, Fedelina is made aware of the grueling social circumstances Indigenous people are subject to as a result of the everlasting impact of colonization.
