Punku, the latest film by Peruvian Rotterdam Tiger Award-winning writer-director J.D. Fernández Molero [Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes)], will have its world premiere in the Forum section of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 13 to 23, 2025. This one-of-a-kind, playfully genre-blending film was shot in 16mm, Super 8, and digital formats, and it will be screened on 35mm in its world premiere at the Berlinale.

Set deep in the Peruvian Amazon lowlands and the tropical city of Quillabamba in the Cusco region of Peru, Punku—which means “gateway” in Quechua—follows an unlikely pair on a foreboding journey that artfully threads together the fantasy and Surrealism of fairy tales with the harsh shadow of trauma in a shared search for belonging and safety.

Meshia, a Matsigenka Indigenous teenager, finds a young boy, Ivan, who vanished two years ago and was presumed dead. Determined to rescue him, she leads him on a journey upriver into the mountains toward the city for a surgery urgently needed to stop the infection that is progressively consuming his sight.

While a withdrawn Ivan grapples with the trauma of his enigmatic past and eerie dreams, Meshia finds herself captivated by the city’s allure. Driven by her strong ambition and fragile illusions, she enters a local beauty pageant. Despite Ivan’s silence, their uncanny bond deepens. However, whether it’s a mythical goblin-like creature from the rainforest or a lone masked assailant at night, an unshakable sense of looming violence is a persistent companion for Meshia and Ivan, threatening to unravel the tenuous life they are building.

An evocative ode to the cultural complexities of Peru, Punku pushes the boundaries of cinema to explore the power of the fantastical, the violence of reality, innocence, and the necessity of tenderness in making sense of a dangerous world, while cementing Fernández Molero’s filmography as one of the most original and provocative in recent Andean cinema.