The Taste of Jocote
by Tonio Hecker / 100 Min. / 4K / 16:9 / Spanish, German, English / Andean road movie / Germany, Colombia
SINOPSIS
On a winter morning, after a night of partying, Konrad (24) is pulled out of a club in Berlin by his girlfriend Cloe (29): Germany’s Foreign Office has called to say that the body of a woman has been found in Ecuador, and they are asking whether someone from the family can travel there to identify it. It could be his mother, Hannah, whom he has not seen since childhood, a German internationalist, was part of the Colombian guerrilla— a silenced chapter in Konrad’s life.
Still hungover and exhausted, he goes to see his grandmother (82), who raised him. When she tries to give him a photograph of his mother, he brusquely rejects it; he wants nothing to do with her, and he does not want to travel. Back in the shared flat where he lives, he shuts himself in his room and retreats into the electronic music he composes whenever he needs to be alone. But after a conversation with Cloe, who reminds him that his grandmother is in no condition to travel, he finally agrees to take the plane.
In Ecuador, they are met at the airport by an official from the German embassy, who is handling this politically sensitive case. With distant courtesy, he takes them to a provincial town. The next morning, in the morgue, Konrad stands for a long time in front of the dead woman’s body. He searches for a gesture, a sign, something familiar. At last, he shakes his head. It isn’t her. The closure Cloe had hoped for does not come.
Cloe tries to keep things together with yoga and meditation at the hotel; Konrad, by contrast, loses himself in the night.
On the outskirts of town, he meets Gabriel (15), a Chilean boy who has escaped from a juvenile detention center, and Luisa (31), a Colombian woman with a hard gaze and few words, who makes it very clear what she thinks of “gringos”: nothing good. And yet, they end up sharing a joint and a silence. Little by little, a decision takes shape in Konrad: not to go back.
After an argument with Cloe, he lets his return flight go and continues on to Colombia. He wants to reach the Micay River, the last place where his mother was known to be. Gabriel and Luisa are also heading north, driven by an improbable dream called Austin, Texas. Konrad joins them.
At first, Luisa and Gabriel see him as just another foreigner with money. But after they are robbed, the social differences between them begin to blur. When Luisa learns Hannah’s story, she begins to open up as well: she was once part of the armed movement, is the mother of two children, and lost her husband in combat. When Konrad asks about possible contacts within the guerrilla, she responds firmly: she wants nothing more to do with that past; she only wants to leave it behind.
At a high-society party where techno is playing, which they only manage to enter because Konrad is German, the class differences between the three of them become painfully visible again. The ostentatious luxury and the humiliations directed at Luisa and Gabriel trigger an outburst. Everything seems to point toward separation, but when the situation turns violent, Konrad sets a fire to help Gabriel and Luisa escape.
Marked by what has happened, Luisa decides to help Konrad. They travel to see Natasha, Luisa’s sister, who is still part of the guerrilla.
The reunion in an isolated village is tense. Natasha accuses Luisa of betrayal; the three of them are detained and interrogated. Konrad and his story are met with suspicion until a commander, who knew Hannah personally, intervenes. Through him, Konrad learns that his mother died years earlier in combat. He also learns that there was a man, Gerson, her companion, who still lives by the Micay River.
Natasha reveals to Luisa that her late husband left her a small house on the Pacific coast, a possible chance to start over with her children. After a village celebration, where Konrad and Luisa dance together, their bodies seek and find each other in the dark. There are no words, no promises—only an intimate moment of farewell.
Konrad continues alone toward the Micay River. In a remote hamlet, he finds Gerson, a man scarred by war. Gerson hands him a pocketknife that once belonged to Hannah and tells him that she left the guerrilla for a time when she became pregnant with him. She wanted to have that child so badly that she was even willing to face a court-martial rather than have an abortion.
On the riverbank, Konrad says goodbye to his mother. The path she chose is not his own. Instead of staying with the guerrilla, he returns in search of Luisa and Gabriel, and finds them on the coast, in a small house threatened by the rising sea.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE - Tonio Hecker
This film arises from my need to better understand the motivations of my German parents, who joined guerrilla movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s and 1990s, and were often absent during my childhood.
I was born in Nicaragua and, as a child, lived in several Latin American countries, including Colombia, before returning to Germany at the age of eight. I did not return to the continent until I was 23. I hitchhiked from Argentina to Colombia and, along the way, met many people; among them Esteban, a 16-year-old Chilean boy who showed me how we could finance our journey by selling cheaply printed poems. A truck driver transporting a cruise ship lifeboat took us along the Pan-American Highway all the way to Cali.
On this journey, I was once again confronted with the continent’s social realities. While tourists from the Global North enjoyed luxurious retreats, only a few meters away, people worked the fields of vast monocultures for less than five dollars a day. This stark contrast helped me understand my parents and their decisions in a new light.
Years later, during the filming of my documentary “Insurgente”, I lived for nearly a year with a unit of the FARC-EP – Colombia’s most well-known guerrilla movement. I accompanied the group through the last year of its existence, from before the ceasefire up until the night before they handed over their weapons.
It was a paradoxical experience: in the middle of a war zone, within an organization negotiating its own end, I felt – for the first time in years – trust, community, and a profound sense of belonging.
When the peace accord was signed, I felt conflicted. Of course, it meant the end – at least for the moment – of a decades-long civil war, and that gave reason for hope. But it also felt like a quiet farewell to the convictions and utopias of my parents and of an entire generation. As if what they once believed possible was now finally being laid to rest.
Today I ask myself what really kept me with the FARC – long after the filming was over – and how I would have reacted if the peace process had failed. This film is the result of years of grappling with those questions. Ultimately, it is about the search for one’s own place in the world… a search, I must admit, I have yet to resolve.
To this day, I feel drawn back to Latin America – to the impressions of my childhood, which give me a sense of security in a fleeting existence and a world I still do not fully understand. Nothing connects me more deeply to that time than the taste of jocotes. When my parents fought, I would climb up onto the roof and eat the fruit that grew there. This film is dedicated to that feeling – and, of course, to Esteban, whom I never saw again.
A production by
urua Films (Berlin, Germany)
In coproduction with
Viso Producciones (Bogotá, Colombia)
Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin
Author and Director
Tonio Hecker
Cinematographer
Arne Büttner
Producers
Catalina Flórez Ibarra & Leonie Pokutta
Coproducers
Sonia Barrera Gutiérrez & Viviana Gómez Echeverry
Moodboard
If the project speaks to you,
we’d be happy to connect and send you more information.
Contact us:
cata@uruafilms.com
+49 177 3402644
Produced by:
Supported by:
The Taste of Jocote
by Tonio Hecker / 100 Min. / 4K / 16:9 / Spanish, German, English / Andean road movie / Germany, Colombia
SINOPSIS
On a winter morning, after a night of partying, Konrad (24) is pulled out of a club in Berlin by his girlfriend Cloe (29): Germany’s Foreign Office has called to say that the body of a woman has been found in Ecuador, and they are asking whether someone from the family can travel there to identify it. It could be his mother, Hannah, whom he has not seen since childhood, a German internationalist, was part of the Colombian guerrilla— a silenced chapter in Konrad’s life.
Still hungover and exhausted, he goes to see his grandmother (82), who raised him. When she tries to give him a photograph of his mother, he brusquely rejects it; he wants nothing to do with her, and he does not want to travel. Back in the shared flat where he lives, he shuts himself in his room and retreats into the electronic music he composes whenever he needs to be alone. But after a conversation with Cloe, who reminds him that his grandmother is in no condition to travel, he finally agrees to take the plane.
In Ecuador, they are met at the airport by an official from the German embassy, who is handling this politically sensitive case. With distant courtesy, he takes them to a provincial town. The next morning, in the morgue, Konrad stands for a long time in front of the dead woman’s body. He searches for a gesture, a sign, something familiar. At last, he shakes his head. It isn’t her. The closure Cloe had hoped for does not come.
Cloe tries to keep things together with yoga and meditation at the hotel; Konrad, by contrast, loses himself in the night.
On the outskirts of town, he meets Gabriel (15), a Chilean boy who has escaped from a juvenile detention center, and Luisa (31), a Colombian woman with a hard gaze and few words, who makes it very clear what she thinks of “gringos”: nothing good. And yet, they end up sharing a joint and a silence. Little by little, a decision takes shape in Konrad: not to go back.
After an argument with Cloe, he lets his return flight go and continues on to Colombia. He wants to reach the Micay River, the last place where his mother was known to be. Gabriel and Luisa are also heading north, driven by an improbable dream called Austin, Texas. Konrad joins them.
At first, Luisa and Gabriel see him as just another foreigner with money. But after they are robbed, the social differences between them begin to blur. When Luisa learns Hannah’s story, she begins to open up as well: she was once part of the armed movement, is the mother of two children, and lost her husband in combat. When Konrad asks about possible contacts within the guerrilla, she responds firmly: she wants nothing more to do with that past; she only wants to leave it behind.
At a high-society party where techno is playing, which they only manage to enter because Konrad is German, the class differences between the three of them become painfully visible again. The ostentatious luxury and the humiliations directed at Luisa and Gabriel trigger an outburst. Everything seems to point toward separation, but when the situation turns violent, Konrad sets a fire to help Gabriel and Luisa escape.
Marked by what has happened, Luisa decides to help Konrad. They travel to see Natasha, Luisa’s sister, who is still part of the guerrilla.
The reunion in an isolated village is tense. Natasha accuses Luisa of betrayal; the three of them are detained and interrogated. Konrad and his story are met with suspicion until a commander, who knew Hannah personally, intervenes. Through him, Konrad learns that his mother died years earlier in combat. He also learns that there was a man, Gerson, her companion, who still lives by the Micay River.
Natasha reveals to Luisa that her late husband left her a small house on the Pacific coast, a possible chance to start over with her children. After a village celebration, where Konrad and Luisa dance together, their bodies seek and find each other in the dark. There are no words, no promises—only an intimate moment of farewell.
Konrad continues alone toward the Micay River. In a remote hamlet, he finds Gerson, a man scarred by war. Gerson hands him a pocketknife that once belonged to Hannah and tells him that she left the guerrilla for a time when she became pregnant with him. She wanted to have that child so badly that she was even willing to face a court-martial rather than have an abortion.
On the riverbank, Konrad says goodbye to his mother. The path she chose is not his own. Instead of staying with the guerrilla, he returns in search of Luisa and Gabriel, and finds them on the coast, in a small house threatened by the rising sea.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE - Tonio Hecker
This film arises from my need to better understand the motivations of my German parents, who joined guerrilla movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s and 1990s, and were often absent during my childhood.
I was born in Nicaragua and, as a child, lived in several Latin American countries, including Colombia, before returning to Germany at the age of eight. I did not return to the continent until I was 23. I hitchhiked from Argentina to Colombia and, along the way, met many people; among them Esteban, a 16-year-old Chilean boy who showed me how we could finance our journey by selling cheaply printed poems. A truck driver transporting a cruise ship lifeboat took us along the Pan-American Highway all the way to Cali.
On this journey, I was once again confronted with the continent’s social realities. While tourists from the Global North enjoyed luxurious retreats, only a few meters away, people worked the fields of vast monocultures for less than five dollars a day. This stark contrast helped me understand my parents and their decisions in a new light.
Years later, during the filming of my documentary “Insurgente”, I lived for nearly a year with a unit of the FARC-EP – Colombia’s most well-known guerrilla movement. I accompanied the group through the last year of its existence, from before the ceasefire up until the night before they handed over their weapons.
It was a paradoxical experience: in the middle of a war zone, within an organization negotiating its own end, I felt – for the first time in years – trust, community, and a profound sense of belonging.
When the peace accord was signed, I felt conflicted. Of course, it meant the end – at least for the moment – of a decades-long civil war, and that gave reason for hope. But it also felt like a quiet farewell to the convictions and utopias of my parents and of an entire generation. As if what they once believed possible was now finally being laid to rest.
Today I ask myself what really kept me with the FARC – long after the filming was over – and how I would have reacted if the peace process had failed. This film is the result of years of grappling with those questions. Ultimately, it is about the search for one’s own place in the world… a search, I must admit, I have yet to resolve.
To this day, I feel drawn back to Latin America – to the impressions of my childhood, which give me a sense of security in a fleeting existence and a world I still do not fully understand. Nothing connects me more deeply to that time than the taste of jocotes. When my parents fought, I would climb up onto the roof and eat the fruit that grew there. This film is dedicated to that feeling – and, of course, to Esteban, whom I never saw again.
A production by
urua Films (Berlin, Germany)
In coproduction with
Viso Producciones (Bogotá, Colombia)
Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin
Author and Director
Tonio Hecker
Cinematographer
Arne Büttner
Producers
Catalina Flórez Ibarra & Leonie Pokutta
Coproducers
Sonia Barrera Gutiérrez & Viviana Gómez Echeverry
Moodboard
If the project speaks to you,
we’d be happy to connect and send you more information.
Contact us:
cata@uruafilms.com
+49 177 3402644
Produced by:
Supported by: