adelaida

Logline: Inspired by a confession made by my 103-year-old grandmother, right before she passed away, Adelaida is the story of a Nicaraguan woman who flees into the jungle to escape the one who loves her the most.

Synopsis: Inspired by the secret confession of her 103-year-old grandmother, who revealed she had been forced to marry the wrong man. Adelaida blends haunting reenactments with lyrical documentary to explore love denied and silence carried through generations. Filmed on the family’s Nicaraguan farm and in the church where her grandmother was married, the film allows the land itself to hold memory and truth. What emerges is a portrait of a woman’s hidden life and the lasting imprint of secrets on family and legacy.

Watch the full short film here (password upon request)

Director’s Statement:

Adelaida began with a conversation I had with my grandmother a few months before she died at 103. The first thing she told me was something I had never heard before: she had been forced to marry my grandfather, and the man she truly loved was someone my grandfather didn’t allow her to marry because he was a Sandinista. It was shocking to hear, and also to learn that she was still in love with a man she didn’t get to marry.

I shot the film on our family farm in Nicaragua and in the church where she was married, which was built by my great-great-grandfather. Being in those places made her story feel present in the land itself.

I chose to make the film mostly without dialogue, creating a suspenseful, moody, and emotionally charged atmosphere. We filmed in the jungle with only natural light, in brutal heat and swarms of bugs. Due to filming restrictions imposed by the Nicaraguan government, we had to smuggle our camera equipment in pieces. Those challenges made the experience as raw and stripped down as the story itself.

In the final moments of the film, my grandmother appears as herself, with the credits rolling over her 100th birthday celebration, surrounded by three generations of family members who were born out of her forced marriage.