Spending the summer in the family home in Caracas, Ena takes up residence with her grandmother, Mamama, and her father. Her father lives in books and has undertaken the crackpot endeavor of saving Venezuela’s literary heritage, although we don’t know exactly from what, or why. After finding a postcard hidden in a book, Ena sets off on a quest for the mysterious work of a writer, Rafael Coronado, who seems to have used several pennames. LOS CAPÍTULOS PERDIDOS does not follow up on these promising intrigues. On the contrary, Alvarado sketches them like so many false leads, preferring to leave dangling the narrative dimension. Understated and elliptical, LOS CAPÍTULOS PERDIDOS creates atmospheres and stasis from which a sweet melancholy emerges. The character of the grandmother is irrevocably losing her memory. The young woman is trying to remember; her father is chasing after the rare works he still hasn’t found amongst the pile of dead leaves that, for Venezuela, books seem to have become – some great readers are dead, others have left to cross the Atlantic. We learn little about the socio-political situation – it’s an off-screen situation permeating the family bubble in echoes, allusions, and reverberations. The filmmaker adds a hint of sadness with the imposing bookcases, the large empty rooms in the house, and the desolate urban spaces. A vague sense of abandonment hovers over everyday life. From what personal story or collective history do the lost chapters of the title come? What we’re left with is what can be saved from being swallowed up by the torpor of summer, which we sense threatens the characters to their very core: the tenderness between the members of this family, a motorbike ride that offers our lucky eyes the vibrant energy of frescoes in Caracas, the modest sharing of a love of literature, and a poem rescued from oblivion. (Claire Lasolle, FIDMarseille 2024)