Estados Generales
2025
color
76’
Excerpts
Since the colonial system, different polymorphous regimes of power extend and feed each other: colonialism, European modernity, anthropocentrism and Western technoscience. The film is conceived as a counter-narrative that explores the spectral capacity of the archive, offering a critical perspective to examine the continuity of contemporary neocolonial structures.
For colonial science, the colonized plant world, beyond constituting an object of study, was an economic tool: a form of capital to be exploited and, at the same time, an instrument of control and subjugation. In response to this logic, the film establishes dialogues between absent dimensions, between landscapes and spectres, between bodies and shadows.
The significance of the seed resonates with “the figure of the spectre” outlined by Mark Fisher in Ghosts of My Life: that which can never be fully present, which does not constitute a being in itself, but points to a relationship with what is no longer or what is not yet. From this perspective, the archive can also be understood as a space inhabited by apparitions, by events that continue to reverberate in the present.
The film re-examines echoes, spectres, and other forms of consciousness that traverse both the past and present of a territory composed of overlapping dimensions and temporalities: the pre-Columbian world, colonial history, the project of modernity, and post-capitalism. This movement across time is explored through a single idea: the political and subversive dimension of the plant world in the face of a Western epistemology.
by Luis Vélez for FIPRESCI, 2026, Edited by José Teodoro ©FIPRESCI 2026
Link to the article
An exceedingly auspicious feature film debut from artist and filmmaker Mauricio Freyre, Estados generales unfolds as the chronicle of a journey, a relocation, and a symbolic restoration. The spaces of departure and arrival—each marked by histories of conquest and extraction—divide the film into two distinct yet interrelated parts. These are circumscribed environments, dense with hidden dimensions that demand interpretation. The film advances through a process of excavation, probing what remains out of sight through light and darkness, hermeneutic inquiry, and a quasi-detective impulse.
The Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid—its historical ties to royal power unmistakable—emerges as a serene yet ideologically charged site. The city surrounding it remains largely unseen, while the garden itself is rendered through a sensuous audiovisual language that foregrounds its edenic qualities. The film’s aesthetic—defined by carefully composed 16mm imagery and meticulous sound design—anchors its conceptual framework. This formal precision becomes instrumental in articulating one of the film’s central concerns: colonialisms, understood not as a singular historical phenomenon but as a multiplicity of enduring structures.
The Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid—its historical ties to royal power unmistakable—emerges as a serene yet ideologically charged site. The city surrounding it remains largely unseen, while the garden itself is rendered through a sensuous audiovisual language that foregrounds its edenic qualities. The film’s aesthetic—defined by carefully composed 16mm imagery and meticulous sound design—anchors its conceptual framework. This formal precision becomes instrumental in articulating one of the film’s central concerns: colonialisms, understood not as a singular historical phenomenon but as a multiplicity of enduring structures.
by Louise Martin Papasian, 2025, FID Marseille
Link to interview
The film establishes a spectral presence, particularly through a nocturnal subjective camera. Is this the point of view of the seeds? Could you elaborate on this dimension? — I have embraced the night, ghosts, and spectrality as aesthetic and political gestures. These seeds are ghosts: dormant bearers of neglected futures. In an age obsessed with the apocalypse, spectral imagination becomes a form of resistance, a way of haunting the present, where the specter acts as the return of an absent presence that destabilizes the present. Like a ghost hunter, it translates imperceptible forces into visible representations.
Through the question of the preservation in Europe of objects looted from the colonies, the film offers a reflection on neocolonialism and presents an emancipatory and utopian counter-narrative. How did you approach this dimension? — The fantasy of the seeds’ return and their latent potential to germinate once again responds to the contemporary resurgence of fascism and imperialism. The film exposes the intertwined powers of capitalism and colonialism. Europe’s foundations are colonial; these abandoned seeds suggest buried alternatives. Capitalism’s drive to categorize has trapped us all in a dead end. The film urges us to recover other visions in order to reimagine the worlds that lie beyond.
Through the question of the preservation in Europe of objects looted from the colonies, the film offers a reflection on neocolonialism and presents an emancipatory and utopian counter-narrative. How did you approach this dimension? — The fantasy of the seeds’ return and their latent potential to germinate once again responds to the contemporary resurgence of fascism and imperialism. The film exposes the intertwined powers of capitalism and colonialism. Europe’s foundations are colonial; these abandoned seeds suggest buried alternatives. Capitalism’s drive to categorize has trapped us all in a dead end. The film urges us to recover other visions in order to reimagine the worlds that lie beyond.
by Dana Linssen, 2026, IDFA
Link to article
“History is therefore never history, but history-for,” a young person reads aloud from a piece of paper. He is perched on the edge of a memorial tablet in the Botanical Gardens in Madrid, filmed on a quiet day. The chirping of crickets blends with the whispering of sprinklers. An idyllic paradise, it seems—but there is nothing untamed or unrestrained about this scene. Every tree and bush has been painstakingly placed; the gardens were laid out with what was then considered scientific precision. This opening scene from the Peruvian film essay Estados generales (2025) by Mauricio Freyre is, of course, quoting the famous words of Belgian-French cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, from his book La pensée sauvage (1961, translated into English as The Savage Mind in 1966 and as Wild Thought in 2021). There, Lévi-Strauss proposes a concept of history that is neither finite nor definite, but dynamic and human—and in which every attempt to write history is inevitably seen through the lens of its own time.
FIDMARSEILLE, 2025 (2/3) D'UN ÉTAT L'AUTRE
by Barnabé Sauvage, Élias Hérody, 2025
Link to article
Estados Generales thus occupies a position halfway between a general inventory of colonial botanical heritage and the convening of an assembly of colonized peoples and their territories—conceived less according to the Latourian model of a “parliament of living beings” than on the basis of a radical decolonialism (albeit one not entirely devoid of a certain vitalist romanticism). This is perhaps how we should understand the “fictional departure” that connects the two spaces and imagines the fable of the land’s renewed fertilization by a couple who appear fleetingly at several moments in the film. In the final shots, a hand retrieves a specimen of a mummified seed (recalling the filmmaker’s 2023 installation Ghost Seed, which emerged from research into the same archival collection) that a shot from the first part had sent to it. By burying it in the soil with a little moisture, the film ends with the hope that it might bloom again on the dispossessed land.
by Victor Dalmau, 2026
Link to Cinemaldito
Estados generales is an exceptional feature-length debut that invites abstraction and reverie through truly unique forms and spaces. Yet its exploratory quality also highlights its significance as an evocative document that reminds us of the importance of retracing history and the past, whether through the questions raised by what remains unknown or through the hope and possibility of recovering what has remained hidden. An incisive exercise that moves beyond established structures and conventions, emerging as an invaluable work of art in dialogue with its own staging and discourse.
FIDMARSEILLE 36 (2025): NUESTRA MÚSICA
by Roger Koza, 2025
Link to article
The critical observations in Estados generales dispense with direct discourse, except for a moment near the end when someone whispers that scientific objectivity does not exist and that every observational procedure through which we approach reality is shaped by particular interests. When Freyre turns his attention to the mass production of mandarins in Peru, he is not merely examining the present condition of seeds, which now bear proper names referring to those who have altered their genetic makeup. Seeds have become inputs in global horticulture. Everything is a commodity. In this sense, the mandarin viewed as a mere commodity is the dialectical counterpart of the seeds of the past, which became what they were through the unpredictable workings of evolution. There is also a history of labor involving seeds, because someone must sow them in the soil. The work of the women harvesting citrus fruit is recorded with the necessary artistic rigor and political sensitivity. There is room to listen to the dreams of the women who work the land and to acknowledge the sacrifices they express.
by Lucas Charrier, 2026
Link to interview
How did you first encounter cinema as a child? — I started watching films on television, on cable, and by chance I discovered avant-garde and experimental films. I also watched a lot of MTV, the Latin American version. At the time, it was quite interesting: they showed short films, cartoons, and somewhat experimental music videos. Later, I started going to the cinematheque in downtown Lima. It no longer exists. Around 2000, under Fujimori’s dictatorship, it was dismantled and sold to a private university. Sometimes I would watch two films a day there; everything was screened on 35mm. I remember seeing Bertolucci’s 1900, which was four hours long, and Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, which was also four hours long, on the same day.
International Film Festival Rotterdam
by Paula Estany Hachuel, 2025
Link to interview
With delicate and meditative cinematography, Freyre presents a reflection on the legacies of colonialism that persist today. The Peruvian filmmaker discovered a forgotten, silenced, archive in the Botanical Garden of Madrid: Estados Generales is his artistic intervention in that space. He speaks with us about the process behind this production, his first feature film, which builds a bridge between Spain and Peru, mirroring the spirit of IFFR’s HBF+Europe funding scheme. His project began in the Botanical Garden of Madrid. Drawn by its architecture, Freyre started researching and noticed a herbarium closed to the public, containing seeds extracted from Spain’s South American colonies, kept in a box labeled “Frutos sin nombres” (“Unnamed fruits”).
Awards
Fipresci Award
16th D’A Film Festival Barcelona, España, 2026
Talents Verd Award - 16th D’A Film Festival Barcelona, España, 2026
Screener
Credits
A film by: Mauricio Freyre
Director: Mauricio Freyre
Produced by: Mauricio Freyre, Estudio RIEN, Tasio, Walden Films
Assistant Director and Line Producer: Diego Cendra
Screenplay: Violeta Janeiro, Mauricio Freyre
Director of Photography: Marta Simões
Art Director: Dora Palomino
Sound: Amanda Villavieja, Mirella Bellido
Sound Design: Mauricio Freyre, Paciencia (José Tena and Tasio), Miguel Calvo “Maiki”
Colorist: Andreia Bertini
Editor: María Anton Cabot
With: Dora Palomino, Ramón Morales, Luanda Palma, Gladys Jacho, Evelyn Saravia, Alberto Cendra, Aitana Ahrens, Ariel Farré, Susana Aguilar, Luis Diego Guzmán, Leopoldo Medina
With the support of: ICAA, Madrid City Council, DAFO, Hubert Bals Fund + Europe Programme of the International Film Festival Rotterdam
With the collaboration of: Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid, CSIC – Spanish National Research Council, Amador Ballumbrosio Cultural Center
Festivals
36º FIDMarseille – Festival International de Cinéma de Marseille, Francia, 2025
38th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam – IDFA, Países Bajos, 2025
29th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – Ji.hlava IDFF, República Checa, 2025
28es Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal – RIDM, Canadá, 2025
27ª Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá – MIDBO, Colombia, 2025
28th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival – TiDF, Grecia, 2026
41º Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara – FICG, México, 2026
16th D’A Film Festival Barcelona, España, 2026
5ª edición de Habitar el Cine – Caracas International Contemporary Film Festival, Venezuela, 2026
23ª edición de Documenta Madrid, España, 2026
62ª Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema – Pesaro Film Festival, Italia, 2026
Biograff – Festival de Cinema e Arte em Movimento, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal, 2026
31e Cinespaña – Festival de cinéma espagnol et portugais, Toulouse, 2026
36º FIDMarseille – Festival International de Cinéma de Marseille, Francia, 2025
38th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam – IDFA, Países Bajos, 2025
29th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – Ji.hlava IDFF, República Checa, 2025
28es Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal – RIDM, Canadá, 2025
27ª Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá – MIDBO, Colombia, 2025
28th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival – TiDF, Grecia, 2026
41º Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara – FICG, México, 2026
16th D’A Film Festival Barcelona, España, 2026
5ª edición de Habitar el Cine – Caracas International Contemporary Film Festival, Venezuela, 2026
23ª edición de Documenta Madrid, España, 2026
62ª Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema – Pesaro Film Festival, Italia, 2026
Biograff – Festival de Cinema e Arte em Movimento, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal, 2026
31e Cinespaña – Festival de cinéma espagnol et portugais, Toulouse, 2026