Este maldito país

Juan, the film director, is Ecuadorian, his partner, Francisca, is Cuban. They live in Paris where their two children were born, just like Juan 30 years earlier. By switching back and forward from past to present, between the history of a family across 3 generations and that of a whole continent, the film director considers the issue of political commitment and the heritage left to the next generation in the form of a letter from a father to his children.

One day five women from Quito, friends in their teens, decide to get back together after fourteen years. Helena is waiting for her second child, Marina lives the ups and downs of infidelity, Diana, an early widow, shares her loneliness with her 15 year old daughter and Tamara has not abandoned the random life of nightclubs, men and drugs. The purpose of their get-together is to visit their old classmate, Alejandra, who is consumed by an illness.

When the Big war started, the 2nd of August 1914, Louis is one of those first mobilized. He has to leave Marie and his village in Corsica for the plains of the Marne where the fights rage. On the front, he is a stretcher-bearer and crosses the battlefield, at night, in search of the wounded. One day, while the trench is sorely lacking water, he is chosen to go to a well situated halfway between the French and German territories in what they called "no-man's-land". There, he finds himself in front of a German soldier who has also come too stock up.

A murder sets in motion a series of tragedies that find their way to the city morgue's Dr. Arturo Fernandez. Physically and emotionally isolated, Arturo develops an intimate relationship with the personal lives of his cases, forcing him to confront his connection to the living and the dead. This dark, serpentine tale offers a richly textured rendering of Ecuador's capital.