Al Otro Lado de La Niebla (Behind the Mist)
by Sebastián Cordero
Ecuador, 2023
synopsis
Iván Vallejo, the first Ecuadorian to summit Mount Everest, wants to make a film which will commemorate his trajectory. He invites Sebastián Cordero to the project, an Ecuadorian filmmaker who premiered his first film in Venice the same year that Iván achieved his feat. Together, they will travel to Nepal, where they will realize they share many similar life experiences but they also have opposing views when imagining this documentary. As days go by, the higher altitude and the depletion of oxygen will raise their debate to interior and transcendental territories, putting at stake their trajectories and their egos when facing the mountain and its millenary depth.
about the director
Sebastián Cordero is an Ecuadorian filmmaker, born in Quito. He spent his teenage years in Paris and studied filmic writing at USC in Los Angeles.
Writer, director, and editor of Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (Ecuador, 1999), his first film, which premiered in Venice and became a social and cultural phenomenon in Ecuador. His next film Cronicas (Mexico-Ecuador, 2004) premiered at Cannes and received several international awards. Rabia (Spain-Colombia, 2011) won the Special Jury Prize in Tokyo and four awards in Málaga, including Best Picture. Pescador (Ecuador-Colombia, 2011) marked a sharp turn towards a freer improvisational process, which contrasted starkly with the scientific rigor of the sci-fi thriller Europa Report (US, 2013), his US/English-language debut.
In 2016 he premiered Sin Muertos No Hay Carnaval (Such is Life in the Tropics, Ecuador-Germany-Mexico, 2016), a portrait of the city of Guayaquil, which was Ecuador’s Official Selection for the 2017 Oscars.
Sebastián has been an advisor at the Sundance Writing Labs in the US and the Bertha Navarro labs in Mexico. In 2013 he founded the Screenwriting Lab for Andean countries in Cuenca, Ecuador, which he co-directs with Bertha Navarro. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
He recently began directing immersive theater, adapting his movie Rabia with great success in Guayaquil and Quito (2019-2020) and finished his first documentary features, Al Otro Lado de La Niebla (Behind the Mist, Ecuador, 2023).