Waters of Pastaza

A group of indigenous Achuar children roam the jungle along the Ecuador–Peru border. The natural world is their habitat, playground and workshop. They scale tall trees with ease to harvest vegetables and fruit, and go out fishing in a small motorboat. They encounter lots of small animals, carve a toy airplane from wood and play at a waterfall.

With skill and confidence, all the children, no matter how small, carry out household tasks that in other parts of the world would only be entrusted to adults, such as cooking on an open fire and chopping food with an enormous cleaver. In some ways it looks like time has stood still in this part of the jungle but, just like everywhere else, modern technologies such as mobile phones have appeared on the scene. And here, too, they exert an almost magical fascination. Filmmaker Inês T. Alves observes all this without judgement, creating a fluid, integrated whole that sways to the rhythms of the jungle and the waves of the Pastaza River.