Name: Lost Chapters
Director: Lorena Alvarado
Released: 2024
Duration: 67 min

Embarking on a literary treasure hunt, a young woman and her bibliophile father seek to unearth not just a lost book but a whole missing chapter of Venezuelan history.

Visiting Caracas after many years abroad, twenty something Ena spends time with her father, book collector and sometime bookshop owner Ignacio, and grandmother, a former poet who now has dementia. One day, rifling through her dad’s library, Ena discovers a handwritten letter alluding to a novel called Elvia by an author she’s never heard of. Intrigued, she and Ignacio set off on a quest across the Venezuelan capital checking everything from stores to archives to families’ personal collections in the hope of locating a copy. A member of Omnes Films, a collective whose works examine “cultural decay in the 21st century”, Lorena Alvarado makes her feature debut with this groundbreaking and incisive excursion into Venezuela’s literary history.

Starring Alvarado’s real-life sister, father and grandmother, the gorgeously shot film – which takes in emblematic murals, sites and neighbourhoods – is both a love letter to Caracas and a revelatory and restrained portrait of a country debilitated by economic and political turmoil. Like its protagonists, Lost Chapters seeks the restitution of personal and national memory alike through its faith in the power of stories.

“A small yet miraculous oasis of beauty ... evokes [Venezuela’s] rich intellectual heritage.” – Film-Forward.com

Note: This film screens with the short film Ana & Oto