The Summer of Flying Fish

Don Francisco is celebrated for the effective if increasingly violent ways he employs to exterminate the carp that overpopulate the artificial lake on his property in the majestically beautiful areas of Curarrehue, Coñaripe, and Liquiñe in southern Chile. His beloved 16-year-old daughter, Manena, seems to be the only one aware of the growing tension surrounding them, as the demands of the Mapuche Indians that have lived and worked in the area for centuries have gone unheard for too long. Marcela Said brings her sharp observational skills as a documentarian to this fiction/nonfiction hybrid, working on location with nonprofessional actors to create a quietly powerful denunciation of environmental destruction and social injustice. But she also succeeds in crafting a moving and vivid youth drama through Manena’s tricky predicament, caught between loyalty to her family and to what she knows is right.