On the Caribbean island of Zuania, where the US military conducted weapons tests for decades and uranium has contaminated the soil, turtle hatchlings search for the sea while herds of feral horses, originally brought to the island by Spanish colonizers, roam the streets at night in search of food.
Beatriz leads tours of the island, which is no longer overrun by soldiers but by tourists. To pay her mortgage, she takes them not only through the mangroves but, for some extra cash, into restricted areas still littered with unexploded ordnance and where there is a risk of radiation exposure. The horses and turtles adapt to an island continually reshaped by those who pass through it.
This surreal, playful visual essay, which raises questions about (neo)colonialism and aggressive real estate speculation in the Caribbean, hovers between fact and fiction—after all, does Zuania actually exist? Winner of the award for best short film at Switzerland's Visions du Réel festival.
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