COMPETITIVE PROGRAM ‒
FEATURE-LENGTH FILMS
Kueka, Ancestral Memory
Куэка, память предков

Premiere: Far Eastern premiere

Production country: Venezuela
Year of production: 2025
Length: 64 min.
Rating (age category): 0+
Film-category (genre): Documentary
Director: María de los Ángeles Peña Fonseca
Producer: María de los Ángeles Peña Fonseca
Screenwriter: María de los Ángeles Peña Fonseca / Dayana Gauthier
Composer: Lino Ocando
DOP: Joel Ochoa, Marcos García, Andrés Durango Peláez, Rodrigo Benavides, Mohamed Hussain
Editor: Dayana Gauthier
Production designer: María de los Ángeles Peña Fonseca
Costume designer: N/A
Make up artist: N/A
Sound director: Lino Ocando
Cast: N/A
Production company: Tejidos de Dignidad
In a community located in the oldest place on planet Earth, in southern Venezuela, three generations of the Pemón people are fighting for the return of their ancestral grandmother, Kowai Kueka. Her spirit is embodied in a red jasper stone weighing more than 20 tons, which was stolen and transported to Germany without the community's consent to be part of an art installation. The council of wise men and women of Mapauri recalls the times when abundant food was a sign of the balance maintained by Kowai Kueka and Amoko, her grandfather. After her abduction, the planet's natural cycles were altered, generating relentless rains that flooded crops and punished hundreds of human beings, alternating with prolonged periods of drought. The guardians of ancestral memory embark on a journey of resistance against memory murder to restore natural balance.
Will the wise men and women be able to achieve the return journey of Grandmother Kueka, exhibited as an object in a Berlin park?
Selected festival history
  • 5to Festival Internacional de Cine del Choco, FICCHO. Quibdó - Chocó (Colombia), July 2025.
  • Mejor Diseño Sonoro.
  • Mejor Largometraje Documental.
  • 13th International Documentary Film Festival Noida. India. September 2025.
  • Special Jury Mention, category 1 hour.
  • Latin American Photography & Film Festival “Verano Vienes”. Vienna (Austria), September 2025.
  • Mejor Largometraje Documental.
  • 13er Festival Audiovisual Bariloche. Bariloche (Argentina), September 2025.
  • Mejor película. Competencia latinoamericana de largometrajes.
  • Official Selection. 13º Festival de Cine de Los Llanos.San Juan de los Morros (Venezuela), November 2025.
  • Mejor largometraje documental.
  • Official Selection. 46° Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana. Cuba. December 2025.
  • María de los Ángeles Peña Fonseca
    DIRECTOR'S BIOGRAPHY:
    Ms. María de los Ángeles Peña Fonseca, 05/28/1979, (Aragua, Venezuela) is a documentary filmmaker, activist, and Indigenous rights defender whose life and work are intertwined with the struggles of Venezuela's indigenous peoples. Over more than two decades of work, she has documented the resistance of the Pemón people, including the emblematic battle for the recovery of Abuela Kueka. Founder of Tejidos de Dignidad, her work has been recognized with the 2020 Aquiles Nazoa Prize.

    DIRECTOR'S FILMOGRAPHY:
    2025 - Kueka, Ancestral Memory
    2002 - Conflicto en el Sur