Tres semanas después

On 27 February 2010, an earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale hit the central coastline of Chile. 500 people died, 500,000 buildings were flattened. Three weeks later, when the initial shock was over, José Luis Torres Leiva travelled to the devastated area to shoot a documentary in eight days.
Not a journalistic reportage, but a visual meditation on the after-effects of the disaster. Just as he did in The Sky, the Earth and the Rain, selected in 2008 for the Tiger Award Competition, Torres Leiva reveals his unique poetic eye for natural landscapes and urban surroundings. He filmed the collapsed roads, demolished houses and shovels clearing rubble in the distance as stil llifes.
The message is clear: this country has become uninhabitable. And reconstruction starts with further destruction: clearing away rubble before new infrastructure can emerge. In the horror, both melancholy and hope can be found.