Floating Population

Carlos Araya / Chile / 2025 / World Premiere / 66 min.

synopsis

This film, which straddles the line between fiction and documentary, is based on the director’s own book, and explores the tension between personal memory and imagination. The author returns to his childhood, when he shared everyday adventures with his friend Zeta, with whom he observed the surrounding world from the treetops, and created fictional stories about their neighbours. Years later, these memories intertwine with a reconstruction of the last hours of Zeta’s life, who tragically died as a member of a bus crew. The actor’s voice presents his thoughts and feelings during the journey, as imagined by the author of the film. They clash with the real testimonies and telephone conversations of passengers in the present, as they travel through the dry and mountainous Chilean landscape. Part of the film traverses the streets from the author’s memories via Google Street View, raising the question of digital memory, the capture of place and time, and the intertwining of reality with its virtual imprint. The work deals with the loss of a loved one, memory, and the ways in which film images and storytelling can capture transience.

“I looked for your dad on Facebook. He told me you’d been hired as a stewardess for a bus company, and that you never came back.”

biography

Writer and film director Carlos Araya Díaz (born 1984) is originally from Chile. He works as a teacher in the fields of screenwriting, directing, and documentary filmmaking, and is the author of several novels. He won an award at the Findocs competition for his film Space Journey (2019), and won the Valdivia Festival in Chile with his film He Who Dances Passes (2023).