Arami Ullón’s second feature Nothing But The Sun (Apenas El Sol) has been selected by the Paraguayan Academy of Cinematographic Arts and as the official entry to represent Paraguay at the upcoming Academy Awards. The Paraguayan-Swiss production, which opened IDFA in 2020, will receive its domestic theatrical release from October 28, 2021.
Nothing But The Sun (BDE IDFA review) is Ullón’s second feature film and will represent the country in the Best International Feature Film category. Ullón’s first feature, Cloudy Times (El Tiempo Nublado, 2016) was previously the first film ever selected to represent Paraguay as an official entry to the Academy Awards.
Ullón comments: “Nothing But The Sun is a work that was very delicately woven over many years, in collaboration with a team from different cultures. And we chose a participatory way of art, where the filmmakers who are part of it documented the work of a great documentarian, Mateo Sobode Chiqueno. Through him, we approached the complex history of an entire people, the Ayoreo. This acknowledgment by the Paraguayan Film Academy allows this film, and the situation of the Ayoreo community in Paraguay, to find even more channels to be seen. This is a great collective achievement.”
The film is a co-production between Paraguay and Switzerland’s Cineworx Filmproduktion and has received several international awards including the FIPRESCI award, and has been presented in more than twenty countries, including at prestigious festivals including Hot Docs, Locarno, Doc NYC, Gijon and IDFA. Its international sales are handled by UK-based Film Republic.
Synopsis: Facing the consequences of a violent uprooting, Mateo Sobode Chiqueno has been recording stories, songs, and testimonies of his Ayoreo people since the 1970s. In an attempt to preserve fragments of a disappearing culture, Mateo walks across communities in the arid and desolate Paraguayan Chaco region, and registers on cassettes the experiences of other Ayoreo who, like him, were born in the vast forest, free and nomadic, without any contact with white civilization, until religious missionaries forced them to abandon their ancestral territory, their means of subsistence, their beliefs and their home.
