Querido Mapa (2022)

“Querido Mapa,” is a short fictional film that explores the speculative cartography. I decided to uncover this relation through the narrative of a taxi driver who maps the city in which he drives through, not only mapping buildings and roads, but also mapping stories of love, death, poetry and space. I believe these testimonies form a large part of the bigger scheme of stories. In this case, stories and memories form part of the cartographic landscape that the film aims to present. The question was how would cartographic practices be shaped if memories, feelings, experiences and dreams were included as part of its formation? This film revealed the beginning of my collage-based language, my twisted tongue slurring stories rather than telling them linearly.

The film intercuts through parts, starting with Onda, the cartographer who begins dialogue with the taxi driver, who almost immediately becomes the protagonist of the film. Towards the end, he meets the aerial sailor, the sky driver: the pilot, whom he has to drive to the airport. The taxi driver and pilot begin to share a conversation about their professions. This moves the idea of cartography as an intimate land-relation, to a bigger scale and scope including the skies, clouds and cosmos. Their conversation takes the audience through stories via a car window, gently mapping an imagined landscape that feels real, while also mapping the violent geopolitics that take place on land and sky.