Ina Mayushin

Emilia, a young widow, is traveling by river to Islandia with her young daughter, Irina, in the 1950s. Because the river is low, they are stranded in Santos, a small town in the Peruvian Amazon. The time they spend there is enough to change the course of their lives. Emilia is the first teacher the town has had. Fifty years later, her legacy remains.

How are biographies charted? How is identity constructed? Can we relive our past, reinvent it, rearrange or recycle it? Can we really know who we are if we ignore where do we come from?

A daughter’s quest for her late mother’s lost paradise. A journey along the Nanay River to find the community that, fifty years ago, became the best place to live—and where she founded the first school.