Synopsis
On the surface El lugar más pequeño (The Tiniest Place) is the story of Cinquera, a village literally wiped off the official map during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. But on a deeper level it is a story about the ability to rise, to rebuild and reinvent oneself after a tragedy. Holding the past and present in focus together, the film takes us to the tiny village nestled in the mountains amidst the humid Salvadoran jungle, while villagers, survivors of the war’s massacres, recount their journey home at war’s end. When they first returned their village no longer existed.
A word from Tënk
In her first feature-length film, Tatiana Huezo Sánchez returns to El Salvador, the country of her birth, paving the way for an extraordinary and powerful body of work. The soundtrack offers us a choral narration by the voices of the survivors, the men and women who survived the civil war, sharing with us the experience of atrocities committed by the US-backed, pro-government forces. The images, with their impeccable and luminous photography, give us time to explore today’s places and faces, to touch the plants and the walls of a cave that was used as a refuge, or to watch the rain fall. In the village and the surrounding forest, life goes on, despite the children and parents who’ve disappeared. The result is a movie that takes its time, the time needed to listen and see, time that offers the chance to live without forgetting, to just carry on living.
Éva Tourrent
Filmmaker and Tënk’s Artistic Director, France
