Directing
Alexandra Cuesta
Alexandra Cuesta is a filmmaker and artist who lives and works between the United States and Ecuador. Her films combine documentary practices, experimental traditions and visual anthropology. An observer with a pressing curiosity of the world around her, she is interested in documenting the everyday, the ordinary, and believes that cinema is the vehicle to highlight and transcend the poetics of th…
Known For
Territorio · 2016Territorio
★ 7.02016
MovieDocumentary
Alexandra Cuesta cites eternal wanderer Henri Michaux as one of the inspirations for her first feature. It’s curious, then, that the opening sequence of Territorio (the first film Cuesta shot in her native Ecuador) shows us a boat heading for the shore. It is very likely that, to Cuesta, the image of water hides the same connotation than it does to the author of “The Sea of Breasts”: returning home, being sheltered in the mother’s womb. Without detouring from the formal approaches of her previous work, Cuesta traces a journey that crosses the country from north to south, drawing a human cartography in which the aim is to achieve an impossible balance between the foreign traveler’s gaze and the earnest familiarity of those who return home temporarily.

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Deslumbrante Oscuridad · 2026Deslumbrante Oscuridad
2026
MovieDocumentary
A non-linear reading of time, jumping between ideas, memories and personal creative process. Words move across the spectre; amidst fragments, frecuencies, interference and resonances; like tuning a radio, articulating an intimate and political reflection on motherhood, distance, extractivism, communication and telepathy.
Farewell · 2013Farewell
2013
Movie
Shot in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, this transitory neighborhood resonates with the poetry of local resident Mapkaulu Roger Nduku. Verses about endings, looking and passing through open up the space projected. A string of tableaus gather a portrait of place and compose a goodbye letter to an ephemeral home.
Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela · 2020Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela
2020
Movie
An afternoon exercise of piecing together minimal details for safekeeping: my grandmother's garden, her music, recipes for well-being.
Lungta · 2022Lungta
2022
Movie
Experimental short film that meditates on the illusion of movement in cinema and the relationship between image and sound, establishing a formal analogy between both elements. The film plays to resolve the paradox between the relationship between real time and the manipulation of it, based on the cinematographic technique. manipulation of time, based on the cinematographic technique
Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part I · 2020Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part I
2020
MovieDocumentary
An autobiographical collection of instances that describe the action of living in a post-industrial landscape, the end of a love story and the politics of what is private and what is public. The camera, as a device for recording and recollection, goes beyond evoking the past to become a tool for the appearance and exorcism of spectres.
Recordando El Ayer · 2007Recordando El Ayer
2007
Movie
Memory and identity are observed through textures of everyday life in a portrait of Jackson Heights, home to a large Latin American immigrant population. Images of street, people, and daily rituals render passing of time in a neighborhood that becomes a mirror not just of another place, but also of the past. The meaning of home is explored and built upon collective recollection.
Think of Me · 2009Think of Me
2009
Movie
Moving from east to west and back, the windows of a bus frame fleeting sections of urban landscape. Throughout the day, images of riders, textures of light and fragments of bodies in space come together to weave a portrait in motion; a contemplative meditation on public transport in the city of Los Angeles. Isolation, routine and everyday splendor, create the backdrop of this journey, while the intermittent sounds of cars construct the soundscape.
Filmography
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