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et in the lush, mist-covered forests of Ecuador’s Andean Chocó, Tarpuna: Keepers of Cacao — Part 1: Water invites viewers into the world of Doña Flor Castillo — a healer, cook, and guardian of ancestral knowledge. A woman of mixed Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian heritage from the coastal province of Esmeraldas, Doña Flor has carried the wisdom of her ancestors from the tropics to the mountains, where she cultivates life, flavor, and memory in harmony with nature.
Through the rhythms of her kitchen at Chontaloma Eco-Reserve, we witness how food, healing, and ecology intertwine. Her cooking—rooted in traditional medicine and enriched by her own innovations—becomes a form of resistance and renewal, sustaining both people and place.
As Doña Flor tends to cacao and the waters of the Mashpi River, the film reveals a profound spiritual relationship between women, seeds, and the living forest. The first part of the episode dedicated to cacao in the Tarpuna series (meaning “to sow” in Kichwa), Water is a poetic meditation on care, inheritance, and the sacred act of nourishment.
Tarpuna is the documentary series of the Seed Savers’ Network of Ecuador, with each episode featuring a different seed and the guardians who protect it.
Directed by Pilar Egüez Guevara (Ecuador)