La casa

30-minute documentary short | Venezuela

In the aftermath of the earthquakes that devastated Venezuela, a young photographer, a grandmother mourning the death of her grandson, a group of student rescuers, and several displaced families reveal the tragedy’s many dimensions.

In the absence of an effective institutional response, citizens recover their dead, assist survivors, document what happened, organize relief efforts, and create new spaces they can still call home. Their stories gradually intersect through rescue work, community organizing, public demonstrations, and a shared demand for answers.

Throughout the film, the idea of la casa expands beyond a physical structure. Home becomes a tent, a basketball court, a church, a street, a community—and ultimately the country itself. Through grief, memory, and collective action, La Casa is not only how destroyed buildings can be reconstructed, but how a community can rebuild after collective loss.

Director's Note

La Casa was born from the urgent need to preserve the memory of a national tragedy while its consequences were still unfolding.

When the earthquakes struck, Rosana Matecki and Anabel Rodríguez Ríos were in Venezuela filming two projects in the Amazon. Suddenly, the catastrophe was before us, and we felt a responsibility to contribute from the place we know best: filmmaking. We understood that the news cycle would move on quickly, while the devastation, grief, and displacement would remain. When the media cameras left, we wanted to stay with the people who would continue living with the consequences.

Rather than creating an exhaustive chronicle of the disaster, we are making an intimate, character-driven film about ordinary citizens who stepped forward when institutions could not protect them. They searched for the missing, recovered bodies, supported survivors, documented the tragedy, organized relief centers, and built temporary shelters and communities.

The film brings together two distinct cinematic languages: Anabel Rodríguez Ríos’s direct and observational approach and Rosana Matecki’s poetic, contemplative sensibility. Each story has its own visual rhythm, but images, sounds, objects, and gestures will move between them, gradually revealing different dimensions of the same national rupture.

The earthquake is the catalyst, but the film’s deeper subject is how people respond when the structures meant to protect them have failed. In the courage and vulnerability of our characters, we find not only the portrait of a wounded country, but also the possibility of a society capable of organizing, caring for others, and rebuilding itself.

Producer's Note

For Invento Films, La Casa continues a long-standing commitment to telling Venezuelan stories through intimate, character-driven cinema.

The collaboration brings together three Venezuelan filmmakers whose previous work has explored the country’s political reality, migration, memory, and the human consequences of institutional collapse. From California, producer and co-writer Marianela Maldonado is supporting the film’s narrative development and helping weave its interconnected stories into a cohesive thirty-minute documentary.

Our challenge is to honor the distinct experience of every participant while building a unified emotional journey. Jesús’s photographs take us inside the first hours of the emergency. Estela’s private grief becomes public action. The young volunteers of Pico y Pala transform a basketball court into a rescue center and collective home. The families of the Gran Hotel confront displacement for a second time, more than twenty-five years after losing their homes in the 1999 Vargas disaster.

The production is guided by a commitment to ethical, dignified storytelling. Destruction is never treated as spectacle, and the participants are not reduced to symbols of tragedy. The film remains close to their daily lives, allowing space for grief, exhaustion, anger, solidarity, and uncertainty.

By connecting these experiences, La Casa asks a question that extends beyond the earthquakes: how can Venezuelans rebuild not only their homes, but also trust, belonging, and a shared future?

Project Status

La Casa is currently in production. The filmmakers spent one month documenting the immediate emergency and its aftermath in Caracas, La Guaira, El Junquito, and other affected communities.

Approximately 60% of the documentary has been filmed, and the film’s narrative structure has been established. The existing footage includes the principal characters and storylines, rescue and relief operations, photographic and citizen-recorded material from the emergency, and intimate observational scenes from the weeks following the disaster.

The production is currently seeking financing to complete the remaining filming, follow the characters as the immediate emergency recedes, and move into editing and post-production. The finished film will be a 30-minute documentary short in Spanish with English subtitles.