Film phase:Production
SYNOPSIS
In this intimate, tender journey through collective resistance in El Salvador, women whose lives are deeply bonded with water and land—reflecting the feminist concept of the body-territory relationship—traverse through a mellow-paced, tropical dream. In a fluid experience of time and place, Vena Acuática reveals the complex layers of El Salvador’s natural ecosystem, piecing together the reality of a region confronting a legacy of environmental negligence through a collage of documentary vignettes.
Vena Acuática is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR & PRODUCER
Amada Torruella (she/they) is a Salvadoran artist, filmmaker, and film programmer raised in El Salvador and Canada, and based between El Salvador and the United States. Amada’s work centers joy and tenderness in the mundane, as well as women’s stories and their care for their environment, each other, and their communities. She is passionate about exploring memory, grief, Central American landscapes, and the relationship between people and their home. In 2023, their short documentary, la isla, about mass detentions in El Salvador, premiered with The New Yorker. Amada’s work has also been featured at Blackstar Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, and the San Diego Latino Film Festival. In 2020, Amada co-founded ZOLAS, a multidisciplinary cultural studio based in San Salvador, run by women artists. She was a 2021 JustFilms Ford Foundation/Rockwood Institute Fellow and a Voices of Our Nations Art (VONA) Fellow.