Augusto Roa Bastos

El portón de los sueños

The film mixes fiction and documentary in an unconventional cinematographic style, to narrate a poetic adventure that encounters the mythical universe of the writer and the Paraguay of yesterday and today. Augusto Roa Bastos, the greatest Paraguayan writer and 1989 Cervantes Prize winner, author of "The Thunder Between the Leaves", "Son of Man", "Yo el Supremo" and "El Fiscal" among others, returns from exile and undertakes a geographical journey and at the same time dreamlike to Iturbe, his childhood town, searching for the land and the characters of his literary fictions to write his novel titled "Contravida." The writer thus participates in a dual condition: as an interpreter of Paraguayan reality and as a protagonist of his own imaginary universe.