Pedro Tomás Explains the World

Three years after the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, filmmaker Werner Herzog visited the Canary Islands for the Film Accelerator workshop. In his wake came fifty young directors and cinematographers, tasked with gathering stories from the local people of La Palma. They had witnessed the devastating power of the volcano for almost a hundred days. What effect did that have on them?

Director Kornelijus Stučkus and cameraman Jacinto Velasco chose the story of Pedro Tomás Remedios Rodriguez. This gentle man describes the world around him only in nouns: flower, duck, motorbike. He sees things differently from most people. He calls a tree “my wife.” And he has a name for the island itself: “home.” But is that really what he means?

“If you want to access a deeper layer of reality, be a poet,” Herzog tells his students. This is precisely where Stučkus and Velasco have succeeded. Their modest portrait shows that beauty and pain can be found close together.